Nothing of the Gods
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: Part of The Moments that We Touch series: volume one. Pre-anime. Stein and Spirit's time in the DWMA, starting on their first day as partners and ending with their last. Followed by A World Like That.
1. Panic

Spirit is shaking by the time he reaches the Death Room. His palms are damp with nervous perspiration, in spite of several swipes at the fabric of his pants in the last few minutes, and his throat is so closed up over his swooping stomach that he can barely breathe. Having tea with Lord Death upon his arrival four days ago had been bad enough, but this promises to be much, much worse than his initial introduction.

He reaches out to push the door open and it flies away from his fingertips, Lord Death throwing it back before he even touches the unidentifiable metallic surface. Spirit jumps and all the air trapped behind the tightness in his throat bursts out of him in a squeaking gasp. It will be very embarrassing as soon as there is space for anything but panic in his mind.

"Mr. Albarn!" Lord Death's voice is startlingly high; Spirit wonders briefly if it's an act to calm his nerves, but it's effective even if it is deliberate. He is able to get a breath past the back of his mouth and even manages a weak smile while Death pats his shoulder expansively, his hand large enough to entirely span Spirit's shoulders. "May I call you Spirit?" He doesn't wait for a response before going on. "It's great to have a scythe in the Academy again. You know it's been quite a while since the last one and I *am* a traditionalist at heart. I have great hopes for you!"

That seems to require some sort of response. "Thank you?" Spirit manages the words but not the tone. His panic is still beating frantically in his chest. Lord Death pats his torso a few more times. He seems to be aiming for comfort, and judging from Spirit's newly rediscovered ability to breathe this seems to be working as well.

Lord Death steps to the side. "Well, it's time to say hello!"

Spirit's throat closes back up. He only has the briefest impression of grey and white and glasses before his eyes obey the force of gravity and shyness and attach themselves to the red toes of his sneakers.

Lord Death is unfazed. "Spirit, this is Franken Stein." Spirit becomes aware of the weight of the huge hand on his back. He feels like he might crumple to the floor, smashed flat between the pressure of the hand and the solidity of the earth beneath his feet.

"Stein, meet Spirit. You'll make a great team, I can tell!" A very distant part of Spirit's mind is impressed by Lord Death's indefatigability in the face of his own terror and the icy silence from the other boy in the room. There hasn't been any sound at all, no scuffling feet or huffed sighs or rustle of clothes. As far as Spirit can hear, he and Lord Death are entirely alone.

"Come on now!" The impossible weight at his back is pushing forward. Spirit angles forward until gravity and reflexes forces his feet to move under his center of mass. He stumbles and almost falls. His gaze comes up as he trips forward and he properly sees the boy selected as his meister.

Stein is small, much smaller than Spirit in that way that can only ever occur in the first handful of years of puberty. Spirit is all arms and legs and perpetually short cuffs showing off his ankles and wrists; Stein is still short, body compact and comfortable in a way that sends envy burning through Spirit even as he wonders how on earth this child is going to wield him in scythe form. His expression is just as calm and unthinkingly self-confident as he is in his body. Even with inches to look up at Spirit's face, his steely green eyes are coolly comfortable behind the protection of unfashionable but functional glasses. Spirit's pride in his new six inches of height flags and fails under that stare.

If Spirit had any nerve left at all after Stein's distant consideration and Lord Death's blithely cheerful introduction, he'd turn and demand that there has been a mistake. Anyone can see that he is the last person who would be compatible with this compact, cool, reserved boy. Lord Death has screwed up, has misread his soul wavelength or perhaps Stein's and put them together. But his will is gone. All he can see is the impending doom of years of suffering as a result of this moment, of his silence at this crucial juncture, and all the saliva in his mouth is gone and he cannot form the words to tell Lord Death that he had made a mistake for the first time in known history.

"That's that then!" Death has not noticed or is perhaps ignoring the fact that neither boy has made any sort of move towards the other. "You'll want to get acquainted, and I'd hate to stand in your way!"

There is nothing else to do. The moment for rebellion is gone, and even as the strength to speak reawakens in Spirit he knows it is only the romantic fire of a lost cause that gives power to his voice again. His tongue has never been manageable by logic, though, and sounds are emerging from his throat without his intention.

"Lord Death, I think there's been-"

"Spirit Albarn." The meister's voice cuts through Spirit's. Spirit's throat closes immediately in response to the command in that tone.

"It's good to meet you." Spirit stares at the other boy. It is impossible to tell if the flat tone is sarcastic or sincere, and his stare is just as inscrutable. "Let's go."

Spirit's feet are following with no command from his brain at all, trailing after his new...acquaintance while he tries to regain enough control over his throat to breathe. The door to the Death Room closes behind them. The other boy doesn't say anything, just continues walking down the corridor without looking back, like he knows Spirit will follow him for lack of further instruction.

Spirit wishes briefly that he is wrong.


	2. Seeing

Stein has come to realize that most people can't see the wavelengths of the souls around them. Sometimes he tries to imagine what it would be like to just see people's faces, to recognize another human based on the shape of their nose or the color of their hair or the sound of their voice. He has never succeeded. It is like trying to imagine what it would be like to be deaf or blind or dead; an interesting mental exercise but ultimately futile. He cannot fathom how he could possibly interact with other creatures without knowing their innermost selves as a reference point, cannot understand how those around him manage as well as they do, even with their bumbling and miscommunications and erroneous assumptions.

Spirit Albarn has a *beautiful* soul wavelength. The potential in the weapon stuns Stein for a moment. Spirit's wavelength is impressively steady, once Stein tips his head slightly to ignore the superficial doubt and nerves flickering across its surface. He has the potential to be the Death Weapon that Lord Death hopes of. Stein wonders if Spirit knows this, if he tastes the core of absolute sincerity beneath Lord Death's encouragement. Probably not. For all his strength, his wavelength lacks focus. It's like a sun, radiating and wasting power and energy without any concern for channeling either into something productive. Right now his panic is barely suppressed, flaring up every few seconds in spite of all Lord Death is saying.

Stein is impressed, as he rarely is by something outside the confines of his own head. It is easy to see the wavelength compatibility between this weapon and himself now, in a room together, when their pairing is all but completed. To notice the potential for such compatibility from a sea of possibility combinations is something else entirely. Stein has no interest or talent for this, but he recognizes the skill Lord Death has displayed.

He consciously unfocuses his sight from Spirit Albarn's soul wavelength and takes in his outward appearance. Shaggy red hair, with the look of a haircut delayed too long rather than deliberate styling. Bony wrists, ankles - he has the half-starved look of a certain age of boy, growing faster than his appetite can yet match. Very blue eyes, when his panic subsides slightly and he meets Stein's calculating gaze. Unusually well-made clothes, for all that he appears to have outgrown them in the last week or two. Panic is rising in his face again, sending his eyes wide and tightening the curve of his eyebrows. He opens his mouth to speak.

"Lord Death, I think there's been-"

Stein knows what he is going to say, knows it as thoroughly as if he was in control of the weapon's mouth and mind himself. The other boy is wrong, of course - there has been no mistake, he is as well-suited to Stein as anyone Stein has ever met - but there is no time to explain this and the other boy wouldn't believe him anyway. Explanations will have to come later.

"Spirit Albarn." The other boy's words shut off like a closed tap, although his mouth is still forming the next syllable of his abortive complaint. "It's good to meet you." He is entirely serious, the phrase catching on his tongue like new instead of sliding off with the lubrication of thousands of polite lies. "Let's go."

Spirit's face is confused, his expression tangling frustration and irritation and tongue-tied nervousness, but his wavelength flickers and steadies. Stein feels the desire to smile pull at the muscles of his mouth as he exits the Death Room. He knows the footsteps will follow well before his ear picks out the sound of expensive shoes on tile floor.


	3. Babbling

After the catastrophe of the initial introduction and an entirely silent walk out of the DWMA, Spirit is not expecting the meister to break the hardened layer of quiet forming around them. He nearly jumps again when the other boy speaks.

"Do you have a room already?" His tone is as casual as if they had a running conversation and very slightly warmer than his earlier curtness. Spirit is embarrassingly relieved by this slight thaw, and his mouth takes the opportunity to run away with him.

"Yes, actually. I've been here for a few days already. You know how it is. Well, maybe you don't, I guess, but I've got one of the apartments they set up for new students. Do you have one? I think meisters and weapons are supposed to room together so we, so they can get a sense for each other, and there's space in mine, but if you already have a place or don't want to stay with me I understand too, I mean I've got a bunch of siblings so I'm used to living with other people but maybe you don't. Do you have siblings?"

Stein is looking at him blankly. Spirit's brain catches up with his mouth and he only barely refrains from the urge to smack himself. The slightest excuse and off he goes, babbling at this total stranger in a nervous rush. He keeps his hands at his sides, but a burning flush of red climbs into his cheeks and settles there. He looks away and coughs in a failed attempt to clear his embarrassment.

"No." There is a pause. Spirit keeps his eyes ahead but he can feel the meister's gaze on him.

"You're blushing." This observation does not help. Spirit's face goes even warmer. "Do you always ramble?"

"Usually." Spirit's tongue aches with the need to fill the gap in conversation. He bites it to keep it still.

"Hm."

The quiet crystallizes for a moment.

"Well, carry on."

Spirit is so startled by the response that for a moment his mind actually goes perfectly blank.

"Uh. Okay. No one's ever told me to just go for it before." He wets his lips, scrambles for the thread of his dropped topic. "Uh. Siblings. Yes! You don't have any? Only child?"

"Yes."

The meister's tone is not particularly encouraging, but with permission obtained Spirit's mouth is running wild. "That's crazy. I've got four, siblings I mean. Five if you count me too. Right in the middle, two older and two younger, three sisters and a little brother. One of my older sisters is a meister like you, but I'm the only weapon in the family so far. Anyway she loved it here, but she never made a Death Weapon. Not everyone does, actually. I guess Lord Death has high hopes for us."

"Yes, he does."

Spirit shrugs, jittery with nervous energy. "I don't know. I mean I hope I don't pull you down or anything. I don't have any idea if I'm any good at this whole weapon thing. But then I guess you've never had a partner either."

"No. But we'll be a good team."

There is no false modesty nor any overstated bravado in the meister's voice. Spirit glances sideways. Stein has stopped staring at him, is looking forward as they walk, but there is a curve at the very corner of his mouth. He is smiling, if only barely. It is the first time Spirit has seen any sort of expression on his new partner's face.

"Ah. Well. Good. I'm glad you think so. I hope you're right." Spirit is turning pink again, flushing warm in relief this time. He coughs and continues his aimless babble.

"Did you only just arrive at the Academy?"

"Yes, just this morning."

"Did they bring your things up for you? They did mine when I got here."

"They did." The other boy's smile is still lingering along his lips. "I believe they were taking them straight to your apartment, actually, given our impending partnership."

"Oh. Good, then." Spirit is not at all sure that it is good, smile or no. He has no idea what to do in the face of the other boy's composure. Worse, he doesn't know what he's done to to merit the meister's apparent approval, which means he could inadvertently undo it at any time.

The other boy stops so abruptly that Spirit takes another few steps before he realizes and comes to a confused halt to look back.

"It's this way. We're almost there now," he offers into the stillness.

"Spirit." He isn't sure he likes how casually the other boy has taken to his name, but he isn't given any chance to protest. "You don't need to worry."

"What? I wasn't," he protests weakly, but the meister is talking over him.

"Lord Death didn't make a mistake. We'll be an excellent team. I can take care of myself and you can do...whatever you normally do." He waves a hand dismissively. "Just relax."

Spirit wants to protest that that's much easier said than done, but irritatingly the reassurance is helping. His shoulders are relaxing from their nervous hunch; the terror of rejection in his stomach is dissipating.

He was never any good at resisting persuasion, not really. "Fine." Rebellion flickers at this capitulation, and he offers a token sally. "I should at least be able to call you something. Is your first name really Franken? Frank?"

The boy shudders. It's barely a reaction at all, but he has been so still that the cringe of distaste is abundantly evident. Spirit feels his eyebrows raise involuntarily in response.

"No." It's not answering Spirit's question, but the finality in the word encompasses and closes the topic anyway. "Call me Stein."

"Okay." And Spirit is extending his hand, awkward even as it is unthinking, a too-adult gesture in his too-young body. He almost regrets it, but there's nothing for it once the motion is begun, and besides it seems strangely appropriate, although he's never before shaken hands with someone his own age.

Stein takes his hand with graceful nonchalance. His skin is cool and dry; Spirit has a moment to mentally bemoan his own damp palms before Stein's fingers close around his with a startling grip, and then he is too busy trying to match the pressure himself to worry about it.

"Nice to meet you, Stein." The words are as formal as the gesture and Spirit has no idea what has taken hold of him, some sort of hereditary memory from his ancestors or washed-out recollections of his father's interactions. Stein appears entirely unfazed, however. He just nods, reaching up to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose even though they don't need it.

"Spirit."

Their hands drop and Spirit stares at Stein blankly. His cultural knowledge has deserted him and now he's just a boy in clothes too nice for his age and too short for his body again.

Stein looks away down the street, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pristine white pants. "So where is this apartment of yours?"

That, at least, Spirit can handle.


	4. Moving In

Spirit and Stein climb four flights of stairs to get to the weapon's apartment. The first thing to see upon entering is an enormous sheet of glass, taking up nearly the entire wall across from the door. Stein amuses himself for a moment by considering how dreadful this room would be if he were afraid of heights before dropping the mental exercise since he's not. The stack of apartments cuts straight down to the street; Stein thinks the walls may actually angle slightly out as they climb, which gives him a clear view out over the sills and window planters of their downstairs neighbors and must make the street below claustrophobic.

Spirit is standing by the door when Stein turns back from the window, gripping a wrist in his alternate hand so his arm crosses defensively over his chest. Stein is almost certain he has no idea he's doing this, which makes the clarity of his body language amusing as well as informative.

"Living room, then?"

Spirit nods jerkily. "Yeah. It's mostly just what the apartment came with, but if you want to add more-"

"This is fine." Stein cuts him off and moves towards the hallway. "Which room is yours?"

"Uh." Spirit struggles to rally his thoughts; Stein can feel his lack of mental balance in his pauses, in the lack of rhythm to his breathing. "The one on the..." A slightly-too-long pause. "Right." Not so good with directions, then.

"And this one's mine." Stein pushes open the door across from the one Spirit indicated. The room is pristine with the cool antiseptic smell of pine and lemon. There's a bed and a desk and a chair and not much else. A lamp. A window. A few bags that Stein last saw this morning when he got on the train that brought him here.

"This is nice."

"Really?" Spirit's voice is much closer to his shoulder than he expects, curiosity apparently having won out over shyness. Stein flinches away slightly from the startling proximity but Spirit doesn't seem to notice. "I thought it was terribly empty when I first showed up."

"This way it's clean to start." Stein tries to explain. "Anything that I add will be just me without any other contaminating influence."

Spirit makes a polite sound, a noncommittal hum that indicates that he has no idea what Stein is talking about. "Living with me is going to be kind of hard, then." He laughs self-consciously. "I think I might be nothing but a contaminating influence."

"That's kind of the point, isn't it?" Stein doesn't mean to lecture, but the words come out flat and colder than he intends. Spirit goes still, his until-now constant fidgeting paused while he tries to figure out if Stein is angry or not.

"I mean." Stein wants to sigh in exasperation. Talking to people is hard, harder when they're blind and deaf to his wavelength, when they are trying to piece together meaning from a body language he has never bothered to use. It has never mattered before, but he would rather have a true partnership rather than a dictatorship, and that means Spirit has to relax.

And that means not sighing, no matter how much he wants to, because that could be taken a hundred ways that he doesn't intend. Instead he pauses to collect his words, to modulate his tone mentally before he continues. "We're supposed to get to know each other, to become more compatible." He glances over his shoulder and tries a smile. It feels stiff and awkward, but Spirit's face responds instantaneously in kind.

"I think I may be rather difficult to tolerate," Stein goes on. Someone else would apologize at this point, but he will only take politeness so far, and he's never apologized for himself before. It doesn't matter anyway; Spirit is leaping on the conversation with visible relief.

"That's okay!" His hands are up, waving away the eccentricities of his new partner like they are dust motes. "I'm easygoing, I can handle anything!"

A flicker of amusement glitters through Stein's thoughts. His new partner truly has no idea what he's getting himself into, but at least they've started now.

"Good." Stein steps over the doorway into his sterile room, turns back to face the other boy. "Go amuse yourself for a while."

He shuts the door in Spirit's face before it has time to register confusion or insult or whatever the weapon's reaction will be. The promise of solitude is calling to Stein, the desire for silence and stillness physically painful in his stomach. The door closes, the wall is entire again.

Stein stares at the shut door for a moment. His body is full of energy, overflowing with a cocktail of emotions that he's not sure how to handle. Tears are not quite appropriate. Anger is closer, but locked in his room it will be difficult to vent once he gives in to it. Exhaustion is predominant, but there's too much tension for him to relax into sleep.

He lifts his hands, stares at his palms for a moment. The lines across his skin look like canyons, the blue of the veins in his wrists the branches of bizarre trees. He laughs, a tiny huffed sound that's barely amusement at all, and folds to the floor with his arms wrapped around his head. There's nothing to do but wait it out. There's never anything else to do.


	5. Practice

Spirit has been lying on the couch for twenty minutes, pretending and failing to study, when Stein comes in.

"Where have you been?" he asks, dropping the book with relief and swinging up to lean over the back of the sofa.

Stein has a book under one arm. He holds it up to indicate. "Studying."

"For Professor Drexel's class? Me too." Spirit waves over his shoulder at the book now abandoned on the floor. "Ready for a break, myself." He stretches with affected nonchalance. "I don't suppose you want to do something."

He is trying very hard to be casual. Stein has turned out to be easy, very easy, to live with. Days have gone past when Spirit isn't even sure there's anyone else in the house; either Stein is very quiet, or very nocturnal, or he has a much more active social life than Spirit suspects. This has been a relief, certainly, but Spirit is beginning to get the uncomfortable sense that his partnership is not quite normal. He never sees anyone without theirs; all the other students appear to be bonding and making friends and supporting each other. He doesn't even know where Stein is most of the time, unless they're in class together or they pass in the living room, and he has had enough. His fear of rejection makes his voice swing high and spins his invitation into a negative, already assuming refusal, but he has to do something.

Stein leans sideways to stare pointedly at the book on the floor. "I don't think we were studying the same way, or the same topic for that matter."

The offhand refusal cuts the strings of Spirit's hopes. He is subsiding back onto the couch when Stein continues. "But I came back because I'm done for the day." He sets the book down on the stand by the door, slides his hands into his pockets with utter precision. "What did you have in mind?"

Nothing comes to mind at all, given how unexpected the meister's response is, but Spirit's runaway mouth sometimes comes in handy. "Whatever, you know. It's just such a nice day out, and I've been inside all day, and you've probably been in the library, haven't you? We could just go out to the edge of the woods, just get some fresh air."

Stein shrugs. "Okay."

The whole thing is alarmingly easy. Spirit feels a bit foolish for worrying about this so much while he stalled on the couch.

They fall into step without any effort on Spirit's part at all. The inches of difference in their size ought to have some effect on their stride, but Stein doesn't seem to be hurrying at all and is pacing Spirit exactly, which at least makes it easy to have a conversation without the awkward consciousness an uncomfortable speed demands.

"So what were you studying?" Spirit tries.

"Biology." Stein smiles very slightly. "Anatomy. It's amazing the similarities between humans and animals when you compare the underlying structures. Everything is just extremely complex machines, with hundreds and thousands of tiny moving parts and processes. It's fascinating, how detailed and precise everything is. The slightest thing can disrupt the whole and bring it all down, and yet breathtaking amounts of damage can be sustained while the crucial elements go on functioning."

It is hands-down the longest speech Stein has ever given. It might be the most the other boy has ever said to Spirit in total. And it's on a topic that Spirit cannot maintain if his life depended on it.

"Oh?" He tries for vague interest, but Stein's faint smile gains ground as it curves into much more of a smirk.

"Not particularly in line with your pursuits, though. Were you actually studying?"

"Of course I was!" His response is too fast for honesty, his face too prone to blushing with awareness at a lie, but the meister shrugs and lets it go.

"If you say so."

Silence descends again, but it's much less tense than usual. The motion of walking is enough to bleed off the nervous energy collecting in Spirit, and Stein is still half-smiling, or at least maintaining an expression much closer to a smile than usual. Spirit is actually comfortable in the quiet until they reach the woods.

"Here we are!" Spirit spreads his arms like the forest is his to present, to offer. "The dark and intimidating forest, full of who-knows-what." He spins to face out over the cityscape laid out below them, falls back against the slanting ground beneath his feet. "At least the view is nice."

"Mm." Stein sits slowly, lowering himself with significantly more care than Spirit has thus demonstrated, folding his knees up against his chest and wrapping his arms around them. The fading golden light of the drowsy sun turns the white of his immaculate jacket butter yellow and catches a reflection off his glasses. From his position next to the meister, Spirit can see him blink hard against the brightness of the sunlight behind the cover of the glare.

"You haven't been out here before, have you?" Spirit asks, even though he knows what the answer will be.

Stein shakes his head in the negative, still staring into the blaze of the sunset. "No. I didn't know there was a forest so close to the city."

"Yep. Some meisters come out here to practice. The rooms are a little small, after all."

"They are."

The angled sunlight is warm on Spirit's face and turns his eyelids dark red when he closes them against the glare. The heat relaxes him; the constant nervous tension of living with a partner he doesn't yet know at all is leeching out, leaving him drowsy and comfortable. He hears Stein shift next to him, the rustle of stiff cloth moving as the other boy straightens his legs in a tiny concession to comfort.

"Stein."

"Yes?"

"We could come out here to practice too." Words are sticking in Spirit's throat but he makes himself go on, keeping his eyes shut so he can tell himself he's alone. "I mean we are supposed to be a team. I don't want to make a fool of myself the first time we try something in class."

Spirit is dreading the pause as he finishes speaking, afraid that the silence will stretch into rejection. Which is silly, of course, but Stein is so distant and he's never had any practice and what if he's terrible at being a weapon?

His thoughts are on tiptoe, ready to sprint forward as soon as the quiet gives them a chance, but Stein responds almost before the last words are out of his mouth.

"Okay."

"What?" Spirit opens his eyes and sits up, brought up short by this unexpected result.

"Okay." Stein turns his head toward him so the glare off the glass vanishes. The meister smiles, and it is brief and awkward and clearly unpracticed, but Spirit's panic subsides as if the other boy had reached out and patted his shoulder.

Stein brings his feet back in and stands so Spirit is unusually looking up at him. He extends a hand. "Shall we?"

"What?" This is not something Spirit is prepared for. "Right now?"

Stein shrugs. "Sure. We've got a little time before the sun goes down."

Spirit swallows and pushes himself to his feet, too flustered to take Stein's offered hand. "Uh. I've not - not really done this before, properly."

Stein smiles again. It is very nearly a smirk, a flash of white teeth that doesn't touch his eyes. "Well, I haven't either. I'll try to not cut myself."

The meister's usual monotone is especially dry. Spirit didn't know until this moment that he would be able to identify sarcasm in the other boy, but that is unquestionably what this is. He flushes with a combination of embarrassment and irritation, but at least they leave no room for nerves.

"Well, good. There's nothing for me to worry about then," he nearly snaps, and then he transforms with no more warning than that.

He feels bad as soon as he does. This is no way to start with his new meister, however off-balance Stein makes him. He's only been in weapon form a handful of times, a few times with his meister sister and once when meeting Lord Death after his arrival. His bow-meister sister had found him frustrating, unwieldy and oddly balanced, and her efforts to teach him some basics came to an abrupt conclusion after a poorly executed move had landed her in the hospital and given him a migraine that lasted three days. Lord Death had been much better; Spirit had very briefly felt like he might not be a total failure as a weapon, but then he had been assigned Stein as a partner. It is dreadful to feel self-conscious about both parts of himself, to have his teenage awkwardness in his body carry over into his weapon form, and he has been hoping that attending the DWMA might help him feel a little better at least in the latter.

This is not the way to achieve that, though. Guilt floods Spirit as his usual senses fade into the distance. He will turn back, he decides, will flicker in and out and apologize and they'll try again. He is just about to change back when Stein catches him.

Every thought of transforming flies straight out of his head; guilt and anger and awkwardness all vanish under the wave of shock that hits him. He can feel Stein's calmness, a bone-deep confidence that Spirit didn't imagine anyone could ever feel, like the sensation of cool water or the taste of mint. Stein is holding the weight of his scythe-form like it's nothing at all, which can't possibly be right because Spirit's sister always struggled with him and Stein is small for his age.

The meister tries an experimental swing. Even with the sensory distance of being in weapon form, the whip of the wind and the speed of the movement are breathtaking. Spirit wonders if this is what flying feels like, isn't sure if he wants to laugh or cry or scream. It has been years since he was comfortable in just his own body, and now he is moving in perfect grace with an entirely strange one and it is easier than breathing. He feels like he could cut through air, slice the dying sunlight, separate time into paper-thin slices if he tried.

Stein is moving now, feet shifting in a pattern that Spirit can predict even before he takes a step. Spirit swings in counterpoint, the heaviness of his scythe-form balancing Stein's bodyweight when he angles sideways. This is absurdly easy, so simple that Spirit doesn't have to think about it. He closes his eyes and it makes no difference at all - it is like a dance that he knows better than he knows how to walk.

He knows when Stein comes to a halt, is already changing back before the meister's feet have quite stopped shifting. He lands on his feet for the first time, some of the newfound grace of the weapon clinging to the muscles of the boy. It takes him a moment to remember how to speak, to reacquaint himself with the tongue and lips and vocal chords of humanity.

"Holy shit," he finally manages. He lifts a hand, stares at it for a moment - has his skin always been this color? Has he always had this many fingers, this angular wrist? - before dragging trembling fingers through his hair.

Stein is watching him, glasses transparent for now and olive-green eyes fixed on his own. His arms are crossed over the line of buttons down his coat, but even thus confined his hands are shaking very slightly.

Spirit licks his lips, looks out at the darkening city, looks back at Stein. "I guess we are compatible after all."

That startles a laugh out of Stein, the curve of his mouth reaching up to his eyes for once. The smile stays, catching a quirk at the corner of his mouth and clinging there even when he manages to contain his amusement. Spirit's mouth angles into a smile as well, although he can feel his shock still softening his eyes and unfocusing his gaze.

"Guess so," Stein finally manages. "We'll be a great team."


	6. Madness

Stein has known this is coming for days.

He can feel it, tickling the back of his mind, rising up his throat, casting a shadow over his vision. It's happened before, this creeping dissatisfaction, but this is the first time since he's come to the DWMA and he has no plan for dealing with it. At home he would lock himself in his room for days at a time, or wander out across the hills until it vanished, or write until his hands cramped and his eyes were bloodshot with too much candlelight and not enough rest. But he has classes now, and a partner who expects him to be at least somewhat functional, and he is not sure that he won't get thrown out entirely if anyone understands the misfiring of his mind.

It *is* a misfiring, an error down in his synapses that he cannot correct and would not if he knew how. It is a friend; it whispers to him when he is alone and trickles through everything he does, leaving a tiny trail behind that he can identify as himself. But the whisper is becoming a scream, the trickle is becoming a waterfall, and when that happens he is not the party in control anymore.

When he woke up this morning it was scratching at his mind, prickling through his blood and staring out from his eyes. He let Spirit leave without him, kept the door locked until the other boy was gone, then bolted from the house and headed for the forest.

It will be better to be away from people, he tells himself over the chittering in his brain. He doesn't take anything with him, hoping that he'll be able to outrun this phase even though this one has the flavor of anger to it and those are the worst. The forest looks brighter by full daylight, green and rustling with life, and it's not what he wants or needs right now but it's as good as he's going to get.

Inside it's darker than it seemed, mushrooms growing in the damp shadows and the trees casting long, heavy curtains of darkness from the sun. It's not helping, though, it's not enough. He regrets leaving his equipment at home; his fingers are itching for the delicate work of surgery, his mouth is watering for the coppery bite of the smell of blood at the back of his tongue. He is about to turn to go back to the apartment - why had he left in the first place? There are so many more interesting subjects in the city anyway - when he hears voices.

It's another meister and weapon, probably from a different class, practicing in a clearing. The meister is a boy; he looks to be a few years older than Spirit, tall and adult-broad in the shoulders. He is holding a two-handed sword, moving carefully through a series of steps that look to be a training routine. His soul wavelength is a low hum, almost a purr; he is confident, comfortable with himself and with his partner, practiced and competent. The weapon's wavelength mirrors back his confidence, sure in its ability after years of experience but with a slight brittleness that suggests this self-assurance is learned rather than intuitive.

Stein stops in the shadows so they won't see the white of his clothes, half-behind a tree but at an angle so he can still see the pair. The boy completes the pattern, brings his feet together and the sword down with finality, and after a moment the weapon changes into a skinny girl.

"That was great!" she bubbles.

The boy's posture relaxes, he grins. "I thought we did pretty well, yeah."

"We'll have to try some of those during our next fight," she goes on. "Especially the double swing there in the middle, that was awesome."

Stein stops listening. The conversation has devolved into self-congratulatory praise and his own thoughts are much more demanding just at the present. His hands twitch into fists at his sides, relax, tense again. His eyes refuse to focus on one point, jumping sideways across his field of vision and landing on unrelated points on the way - a chunk of bark, a torn spiderweb, the underside of a leaf. His heart is racing while his thoughts calmly calculate, noting the increase in his rate of breath, the burn of air in his throat, the flush of blood climbing into his skin.

He steps from behind the tree and comes forward. He is nearly upon the other two students before they see him, jumping apart as if he has caught them doing something they shouldn't.

"Uh. Hi." The boy coughs, stuffs his hands into his pockets. The girl has turned red and is straightening her shirt. "We didn't know anyone else was out here."

"Are you a new student?" the girl offers, her voice higher than it was a moment ago. "I don't think I've seen you before."

Stein is still coming towards them. He has lost control over his legs; his hands are clenched at his sides, and adrenaline is pouring through him. He knows the point at which the boy will protest, the exact moment when he will cross over into the other meister's personal space.

He crosses the line, coming in uncomfortably close to another body, and the boy takes a half-step backward, forced smile fading along.

"What are you doing?" There is panic in his voice, laced over with the low thrum of masculine posturing. The boy straightens his shoulders, leans forward so he is looming over Stein with the extra inches his years give him.

Stein looks up at him, but his eyes are out-of-focus, his concentration all turned inward. His fingers twitch against his palms, moving without any mental command from him. He is keeping himself still, but only barely; his muscles are tense with something, desire or excitement or anger. The moment stretches tight, the girl shifting nervously in his periphery, the boy leaning in while Stein stays where he is, distantly watching the slow creep of fear across the other meister's face. Something in Stein's face does this, he knows; he has never seen it himself, never felt the instinctive recoil from *wrongness* in another human, but he has developed a taste for the reaction to it, has learned that there are times when just existing will push those around him into defensive backlash.

Stein can see when the trembling of fright in the boy's soul wavelength hardens into brittle resolve, even though his eyes won't bring his features into clarity. He knows what is coming a moment before the shove comes, forcing his shoulders backward. If he wasn't expecting it, if his feet weren't already moving backward under his center of mass, he would have fallen; as it is he stumbles backward and his vision careens dizzily around him.

"Give me some space!" the boy snaps, rocking back on his heels. "What are you doing out here anyway?" He is angry now, has committed to the unjustified emotion entirely. When Stein swings his head up to stare at him, face angled so his hair falls over one eye, the other boy actually steps forward, brandishing a clenched fist like it's supposed to be a threat. "Get out of here!"

The girl is coming up behind the meister. Her fear has turned to flight instead of fight; she touches his arm. "Let's just go."

Stein is expecting him to shake her off. Everything about the situation says that he should brush her aside, the frightened fury in him echoing off Stein's mental cacophony and collapsing into a crescendo of violence. Stein just needs the excuse, the strange, sour satisfaction of pain to act as a catalyst and let him sink his fists into the flesh of the boy in front of him.

The other meister's shoulders relax. He blinks, angles his body away from Stein and towards the weapon. The fight bleeds out of him and out of his wavelength. Stein would scream in frustration if he weren't so on edge he can barely breathe.

The partners turn and leave, the girl sliding her hand into the boy's as they go. The meister doesn't look back. The weapon does, just once, her wavelength oozing pity or concern or something equally condescending in the moment before he can blink out of seeing it.

Stein waits until they are gone before he kneels on the ground of the clearing and begins to deliberately pound the skin off his knuckles. The pain once the bruises open into blood sweeps through his veins and drowns out the discordance in his head. When he finally stops, he can't relax his hands and he can't feel anything but the hurt and the thump of his heartbeat in his head. He curls sideways onto the ground and starts to laugh as dirt clots onto his open wounds.


	7. Classroom

Spirit had expected that combat training would be fun. Learning to fight sounded exciting, if somewhat terrifying, and when Professor Drexel announced that they would be staging mock duels to get a feel for each other, he had even looked forward to class for a few days.

But then the fighting actually began, and it is proving to be painfully dull. Even with the practicing they are all doing in their free time, no one is very good, nothing like the smooth, efficient fluidity Spirit has seen in the older students. And then Drexel is always interrupting the combat, talking the students through adjusting their stances or angling their arms or some other stupid thing like that. It doesn't look like much fun to experience, and it's even worse to watch.

Spirit leans sideways towards Stein. The meister is perched on the very edge of the bench, chin resting on the tables and arms crossed in front of him so all Spirit can see is a lot of grey hair and his glasses. He looks infuriatingly entranced.

"Where were you yesterday?" Spirit hisses in a whisper that only barely qualifies as such. Stein has been around the apartment significantly more of late, still quiet and unobtrusive but just existing in Spirit's periphery. It's been nice. It reminds Spirit of home, with a house full of other people and the constant low hum of conversation. Even though Stein is nothing like Spirit's sisters and talking with him is always at least a little unsettling, it's comforting to have someone around to fill the cavernous loneliness of an empty room. The new normal of his silent presence made his absence the afternoon before twice as noticeable as it had been before.

Stein doesn't turn, doesn't react at all. Spirit opens his mouth to repeat his interrogation.

"Where-"

"I'm trying to watch," he doesn't answer. His voice is much softer than Spirit's. "Shouldn't you be taking notes or something?"

Spirit rolls his eyes, although from his angle the expression is entirely lost on the back of Stein's head. "On what? The correct posture for a knife-meister to take in the heat of combat?"

"It's not the details that are important." Stein's tone is reminiscent of Professor Drexel's, for all that he is whispering so softly Spirit has to lean in to hear him. "The posture hardly matters; it's just a tool so the meister can focus on what he's doing. It brings his soul wavelength closer to his weapon's so she can work better with him; otherwise he's too enthusiastic, throwing himself into the fight while she's lagging behind."

Spirit is floored. "How do you know all that?"

He half-expects Stein to chide him for not paying attention to some earlier explanation of the professor's, but the meister just shrugs.

"I can see it."

Spirit sighs. "That doesn't make any sense, Stein. I've been watching too and-"

He cuts himself off, replays the conversation through again.

"Stein. You can see soul wavelengths?" He has all but given up on the whispering. A handful of students in the row ahead of them twist around, some looking bored, some to glare and hiss at him to be quiet.

"Yeah."

Spirit throws his hands into the air, a little impressed and a lot irritated. "And you didn't *tell* me? You could have mentioned this at some point, you know."

Stein doesn't move his body, but his gaze slides sideways to Spirit's face. Spirit's voice is rising in both volume and pitch and he can't be bothered to modulate either at the moment.

"Just casually dropped it into conversation, you know, rather than keeping it to yourself for *all this time*! 'Hey *partner*, just so you know I can see soul wavelengths. Maybe it'll *come in handy*, you never know!'"

"Mr. Albarn."

Professor Drexel is delightfully calm in general. This is not the first time Spirit has gotten called out in her class, although it is the first time it has happened while he has been trying to talk to Stein. Her expression is relaxed, so Spirit isn't too worried even though her arms are crossed in front of her in the unmistakable sign of 'you're in trouble, mister.' Still, he jumps at his name and flushes as usual when called out on something he knows he shouldn't be doing.

"Yes Professor?"

He is trying for innocence, even though his telltale blush is undermining that, but Stein is still looking at him sideways, and he can just see the corner of the meister's mouth twitch in a smile. His own face starts to echo in response, which severely undermines his attempt at innocent nonchalance.

Professor Drexel doesn't say anything in specific, for which Spirit is forever grateful. "I was planning on having you and Mr. Stein come down next. Would you step down to the front here?"

Stein is already on his feet, eyes forward again now and face entirely composed again. Spirit trails after him down the steep incline of the aisles to the front of the room.

"Ms. Butler, Ms. Richards, you can go." The two girls begin the climb back to their seats, leaving the enthusiastic knife-meister and his weapon across the dais from Stein and Spirit. Drexel leans back behind her desk, watching the four students with an expression that just briefly reminds Spirit of Stein's focused gaze.

"Mr. Albarn, if you would be so kind."

Spirit has not had an experience with stage fright before, but he is coming to understand it much faster than he ever wanted to. His stomach is sinking through his body, leaving a vacuum of cold terror behind, and for a moment he entirely forgets how to transform, like the dozens of eyes upon him are freezing him in his current form and position. The shreds of rationality left behind are praising him for doing this before, for practicing at least the once, but the rest of him is still unable to remember how to make the change, practice or not.

Stein glances at him. The meister's gaze is as distant as it ever has been, but it gives Spirit something to cling to for a moment, because they are partners, after all, and even if he fails at least Stein will maintain the dignity of calmness.

He is still in the midst of this relief when Stein extends his hand, the gesture infused with all the self-assured confidence Spirit has been admiring, and Spirit transforms before he remembers that he's forgotten how.

It is just as easy as the first time, easier, even, now that Spirit isn't cutting himself off with needless worry about Stein's abilities. And this time it's an escape from the inexplicable fright that is chilling him as the form pushes his awareness of his surroundings a short distance away. Stein catches his newly-transformed weapon and for a moment Spirit feels nothing at all but deep relief that someone else can take change.

*Focus.*

The word is inserted into his thoughts, clearly foreign but appearing in a setting that has only held Spirit's self until now. He has a wave of vertigo, a sense that he has lost track of his own personality and was that *his* thought coming through? Then his memory offers recognition: Stein's voice, though oddly inflected and out-of-place here, tinged with that same unshakeable assurance.

"Did you know you could do that?" Spirit says aloud, although his words are lost to the restrictions of his current form.

Faint amusement, then *Here we go.*

That's all the warning Stein gives him before spinning the weapon in a smooth arc and crashing into the other pair. The impact itself is not so bad - Spirit is much sturdier in weapon form than boy - but as soon as he contacts the knife Spirit feels like he's been shocked, like all the muscles he doesn't currently have are trying to cramp up. It's not unbearable, but it is deeply unpleasant, and he tries to jerk backward like he would from a hot pan. Stein stumbles sideways, the elegance of their original solo experiment lost as Spirit attempts to flail the body he's used to instead of the form he has, and Stein nearly drops him as his ankle twists under him.

The meister *hisses* at Spirit, irritation carried better in the brief explosion of wordless anger than any cursing could have managed, and Spirit recalls himself with the rapidity that only guilt can provide. Stein angles his foot and they're back in sync. Professor Drexel is saying something but her words are at a distance; Spirit can barely hear her if he tries, and just at the moment Stein's thoughts are drowning out his own inner monologue and leaving nothing left over for any external attention. Another movement through the air, and this time Spirit is braced for the burst of pain upon contact with the other weapon. Stein shifts his grip and steps forward so he can swing Spirit around and bring the scythe handle into the other meister's side. The other student gets an arm up to deflect the blow, but the impact still knocks him nearly off the dais. He takes several short, too-fast steps in an attempt to recover his balance, but his grip on his weapon is all wrong, and then he loses his flailing battle and drops to one knee.

Spirit watches the other boys' struggle, failure, fall from his slightly removed vantage, and he expects Stein to pull back as soon as it becomes clear the other pair won't be able to recover. As meister goes down, there is a surge of something in Stein, so strong that it pours into Spirit, a sensation so foreign he doesn't even know how to name it. It fires his blood, rushes through him in a wave like pleasure but stronger and far more demanding than anything he's ever felt, and in the midst of that Stein is still moving forward, swinging Spirit around towards the boy now half-kneeling in front of them. Spirit's panic at this realization is enough to break him free of the shock of that unfamiliar sensation, but Stein has fully committed himself to the motion and Spirit can't remember how to abort the action now that it's begun.

So he does the only thing he can do and drops back into the safety of his human form. Angled as they are, he topples forward onto the other meister so they end up in a heap of arms and legs while Stein goes backward so hard he skids on the floor. His hearing comes back in a rush just as Professor Drexel is rushing forward.

"Mr. Albarn!" She crouches over him, reaching out to grasp his shoulder. Her face is still calm but her dark eyes are full of concern in the moment before she sees that he is rising.

"Are you injured?" The question is ostensibly to both he and the other meister, but when the knife flickers back into the shape of a girl Spirit understands her worry much better. He had forgotten about the other weapon in his haste to prevent doing damage himself; upon reflection he's not quite sure how he managed to avoid stabbing himself in his tumble.

"I'm fine," he offers, although by now she can see that he is up and unharmed. The other meister jerks his head in shaky agreement, eyes wide with lingering adrenaline from the brief fight.

"Spirit." The touch on his shoulder is so light he might have missed it but for his name. When he turns Stein is standing behind him, fingertips against his shirt and green eyes fixed on his face. There is a moment of what looks like concern, or perhaps apology, or perhaps something entirely different - then the meister blinks, and shifts his weight back somehow so he's leaning back instead of in, and Spirit's not sure there was ever anything there at all.

"I would have stopped," Stein says, voice so soft that Spirit sees the movement of his lips more than he hears the words. He's not at all sure that he agrees with this assessment, but he grins shakily and nods anyway.

"You won't need to with Kishin, right?"

Professor Drexel is talking behind him, explaining to the class that their "excellent compatibility" and Stein's "superb understanding of his weapon" gave them the advantage that ended their mock fight so rapidly. By the time she turns away from the class as a whole to beam at the two of them, fear and concern have been entirely removed from her expression.

"I don't think it's entirely fair for you to practice on the other students at this point," she explains. "I'll see if we can't get you two an assignment so you can get into field work right away; something easy to start, of course, but it'll be better if you don't have to pull any punches."

She reaches out to grip Spirit's shoulder in what he thinks is meant to be reassurance, but the faint pressure of Stein's fingers, still lingering against his arm, offers significantly more comfort than the patronizing squeeze she gives him. Then her words sink in, and Spirit's stomach swings unpleasantly to the lowest point in his body. He thinks about transforming again, just to run from the awareness for a while, but instead he drags a shaky smile onto his face and nods.

"Sounds great." His voice is utterly unconvincing even to him, but the professor releases his shoulder and lets him and Stein escape back to their previous seats, where Spirit can stare at the mock fights without seeing anything at all and do his best to forget what she has said.


	8. Assignment

Stein likes the night. He likes the day too, has nothing against the razor-bright clarity of daylight, but he is always intrigued by how different things look in the darkness.

Death City is positively sinister by the light of the laughing moon. The same narrow alleyways that are just uncomfortably tight during the day loom by night, as if the weight of the walls above them will pull the stonework down to bury him where he stands. The silence of the hour is as heavy as the architecture, uncomfortably unusual in the middle of the city. When Stein stops walking, the echoes of his footsteps fade faster than they should, swallowed up by that oppressive quiet, and all he can hear is the faint whisper of his own breath. Spirit seems to be infected by the uncanny stillness of the city; even in weapon form, he is generally chatty, but now there is only the prickle of unfamiliar emotions at the back of Stein's brain to indicate that the scythe in his hands is anything more than a tool.

Stein shifts his grip, steps forward to set the echoes humming once more. He is ready for activity, for a fight if he can find it, but the night has turned the corner of midnight and started moving back towards day, and he has neither seen nor sensed the Kishin egg that they were sent out to collect. He considers telling Spirit to change back; even the tension of the situation won't be enough to keep his weapon quiet with the added nerves of his human form, and aimless chatter would be a distraction from present boredom. But that would defeat the purpose, of course, and the possible payoff of a proper battle is worth the current dullness.

There is a break in the pattern of sound. It's barely present, a scuffle that is all but drowned out in the lingering sound of footsteps, but it is there. Stein keeps walking without changing his pace, but he blinks and deliberately loses focus on the darkness around them, looking for a soul wavelength instead.

It's there as soon as he opens his eyes, a sickly red glow around the corner of the next building. His feet want to speed up, to bolt around the building and engage, but he keeps them in check and maintains his even pace. Outward appearances notwithstanding, his thoughts are now entirely focused, and the shift brings a response from Spirit for the first time in nearly an hour.

*What is it?* It's barely a question, given their goal in the first place and the silence of the city around them, and Stein can feel the nervous tension hit Spirit's wavelength even though the meister doesn't respond. It is for the best; the stress means Spirit will be ready when Stein attacks, and the younger boy isn't sure they'll have much warning at all.

They're on the far edge of the city, down one of the side streets that is too narrow for Stein to effectively swing. Ideally he'll maneuver out to a more open area, where the surroundings won't hinder his movements, but he's not sure how the Kishin egg will react to their proximity. Not that it matters much, as he steps past the corner before there's time to form any sort of proper plan.

He's trying to not look, trying to pretend ignorance of the egg's location, but that eerie color pulls his eyes against his efforts and he gets a brief glimpse of the corrupted soul before they drop into another alley. The skin just above the collar of his jacket prickles with a sensation he categorizes as fear based on recent experience with Spirit's spiking emotions and his fingers itch with the feeling he recognizes as curiosity. He almost turns back to face it, to get a proper look at the creature and to keep his undefended back away from it, but rationality wins out and he keeps his measured pace down the street.

It's very good at matching its movements to his steps; he can't hear it at all, but now that he knows it's there he can feel the soul lurking in the shadows behind them. Spirit whimpers so softly Stein barely notices, a tiny concession to fright, and he doesn't bother to chide the weapon for it.

The street clears, the edge of the city cutting off the angled buildings with no warning at all, and there is the forest ahead, even darker than the covered streets they have left. Stein picks up his pace slightly, excitement and fear winning out even over his self-control. Out from the cover of the buildings he realizes that it is raining, a faint mist that has turned the ground under his feet slick with a thin coat of mud.

He turns back to face down the street, pivoting on the slippery ground and bringing Spirit down to angle across his body. The street behind them is utterly black to his normal vision, but the Kishin egg's soul offers bloody illumination. He is ready to read the wavelength as he read their classmates' during their first duel, to develop a plan of attack customized to the egg and execute it.

He is not ready for the thing to be charging at them out of the street. He barely has time to absorb the change and skip sideways away from the incoming blow, much less to analyze the foreign Kishin wavelength. There is a sound in his head and he's not sure if it's himself or Spirit screaming in fright, and there is no time to find out. He swings wildly, nearly falling as he almost loses his grip, but at least that drives the creature back out of range for a moment. When it comes back at them, his hands and feet are back in order, if his thoughts are not.

It swings and he ducks, remembering to bring Spirit down with him. The blow gusts over his head and he runs in, trying to close inside the range of the egg's oversized arms. The other hand comes in and he pulls the scythe in his hands up to block, but the impact nearly drags him off his feet and Spirit curses as borrowed pain explodes into Stein's brain. He keeps going under the arms rather than swinging, coming out behind the thing and skidding up the low rise to the edge of the forest before he turns.

*Are you okay?* Spirit asks, and Stein almost laughs before catching it on the back of his tongue.

"It doesn't matter," he says aloud, shifting his feet apart to brace himself as the creature leans forward in preparation for a charge. He can see its soul now, red and raw at the edges like the torn imprecision of an accidental injury. His fingers twitch of their own accord. "Ready."

It doesn't come out like a question but Spirit responds anyway. *Ready.* Stein can feel the weapon's scattered wavelength coalescing into focus and he grins the way he has trained himself not to in front of others, showing too many teeth and too much of himself.

The Kishin egg tears up the slope towards them, limbs too long for its body flowing together so it looks like it may trip itself at any moment, but the way it moves is too fluid for a mistake so mundane. Stein is ready when it comes within reach. He holds his ground, keeps his feet planted even when the ragged things that were once fingernails tear at his shoulder. The pain is more immediate than Spirit's was, blossoming into his mind and clouding his focus for a moment, and this time when he feels the darkness coming on he gives in to it, calls it up from its usual confinement and hands control over to it.

The next hit is satisfying even as he staggers under the impact, the feel of blood dripping over his skin sending shivers through him that have nothing at all to do with pain. He swings one-handed behind him without looking and hears the creature growl, feels the jolt up his arm at the weapon makes contact with something. When he follows the weapon's trajectory and turns, the Kishin egg has pulled back a step. He can faintly see the spread of color over its too-pale, too-tight skin, but most of his focus is given over to the wavelength, which flickers with newfound uncertainty.

His smile is still tearing his face in two, his legs angled in counterpoint to his weapon so he is standing at a sharp angle to the ground. He is aware of the picture he is presenting and doesn't care one way or the other. His arm tingles, the pump of his heart sending slow rivulets of red in irregular patterns down his sleeve, and he can feel Spirit wincing in the back of his head.

This time he closes, sliding down the hill so he is half-running, half-skating towards the Kishin egg. His momentum carries him within reach, keeps him upright while the thing swipes at the wall of his scythe before hitting him hard across the face. He bites his tongue, spits blood, but the impact counters the hit on Spirit and he is on his feet again and closer now, almost within swinging distance. The soul is right there, nearly within reach, but as he gets closer the confining body of the creature obscures his vision. The perfect opportunity to study a new piece of information, and he is *losing* it.

His hands are moving on their own, bringing Spirit up over his shoulder even as the Kishin egg connects with him again. The pain drips into his mind, pours over his nerves, but he's already committed to the motion. The angle is perfect, the swing as certain as in their classroom duel, and this time Spirit doesn't shift at the last moment. The black blade slices through the narrowest point of the creature's body, the flesh unravelling around it and spraying body-hot blood across Stein's face and shirt, and the darkness in him shrieks in triumph


	9. Swallow

Spirit flickers back into his body the moment Stein swings him upright. His lack of patience means he topples sideways as he changes, gravity dragging him earthward much more forcefully than when he is in weapon form. His surroundings pour into his returned senses, so hard and so fast that for a moment he's glad to be on the ground in spite of the bruises he can feel rising from his crashing impact. Colors are brighter, sounds clearer, sensations excruciatingly intense. He can smell the blood all around them - his, Stein's, the enemy's - taste it on the air when he inhales, overpowering the faint oily tang of transformation.

Spirit doesn't usually have a delicate stomach, but with his head whirling with the influx of information from his body the wave of nausea from the slick metallic flavor of the air is impossible to avoid. He retches, regretting it even as he does so - the burn of acid in his throat is infinitely worse in these few hypersensitive moments. But at least it provides a distraction from the blood, from the body, from the creature he has just killed.

Spirit's heightened awareness has faded back into blissfully normal distraction by the time he can stop convulsively heaving on his hands and knees. As soon as the flush of horrified disgust fades from the back of his jaw, he crumples to the ground. Dirt grinds into his elbows, muddy with what for now he decides to believe is rain, staining his shirt beyond redemption and probably opening him up to all sorts of awful infections in his battle wounds, but in the space between breaths he doesn't care.

There is something he has to remember, something other than the dirt and the cold and the sour-sweet burn at the back of his mouth and the thing he has just... His mind dances sideways from that. Something else. Something important.

Spirit sits bolt upright, nausea and self-loathing forgotten. "Stein!" It's dark, the moon only just beginning to crawl over the horizon, but he can see the... the enemy, the soul hovering just over the ground and glowing fitfully, so he should be able to...

"Look at it."

Spirit twists sharply, hissing as he cracks open a scab forming along his ribcage (when had that happened?). Stein is standing behind him; he doesn't appear to have moved in the long minutes Spirit has been incapacitated by nausea and pain and emotion. His head is down, his hair casting his face in shadow, but the frame of his glasses glints in the first rays of moonlight. Spirit notes the dark Rorschach blot sprayed over his white shirt before his mind dodges that train of thought as well.

"Stein, are you hurt?" Spirit forces himself to his feet. Once he's upright it's easier to stay that way than he had expected, although he can't get his hands to stop shaking until he crosses his arms and wraps them over his elbows. Stein looks alright, other than the stain across his chest, but Spirit isn't willing to trust first impressions. At least they are both on their feet for now.

"That was amazing." Stein's voice is tinged with something Spirit doesn't recognize, some odd tonality that makes the sound almost unrecognizable. "Yes." The meister lifts his hands. The moonlight catches them for a moment, turning the darkness streaked across them red. Spirit's stomach lurches, but Stein's hands are perfectly steady. Spirit feels more isolated than he ever has before in his life.

"Amazing." Stein pushes his hair back from his face and Spirit sees that he is smiling, eyes shut and head tipped back. Stein exhales slowly, his lips pursing so his breath curls out like smoke into the icy air. Some everpresent tension in his expression or his body is gone; he arches back, stretching like a cat, and his face looks almost peaceful. He straightens, twitches his shoulders back into their normal alignment, and is almost normal again, but when he opens his eyes there is something soft and pleased in them. Goosebumps sweep across Spirit's skin.

"Take it." Stein's voice is back to its usual distant coldness, his gesture towards the floating soul crisp and peremptory.

Spirit is shaking his head before he realizes what he is doing. "No." His voice is shaking more than his hands, tears climbing his throat to his eyes. "No, I don't want it."

"You earned it."

"No." Spirit's tongue takes refuge in babbling, as it always does. "No, I didn't do anything, I was just *there,* really, it was all you..." He isn't sure if he's trying to dodge Stein's praise or his own guilt and it doesn't matter. Bile rise on the heels of the tears."I don't want it, I can't, I-"

"Spirit." His name cuts through the stream of syllables. "It's yours." Stein steps through the gory remains of the battle to crouch down and cup his hand under the soul. It rises with his palm, the red flicker coming up to wash his face in a bloody haze.

Stein stares at the soul for a moment, and Spirit briefly harbors insane delusions of running, of leaving the blood and the pain and the death and just being a normal human. But then the meister looks up to lock his gaze with Spirit's, and the madness in Stein's illuminated eyes crushes Spirit's beneath its weight.

"Here." Stein extends his hand so his face drops back into shadow. "I'd take it if I could, but it won't do me any good."

Spirit couldn't speak if he tried, but he's shaking his head, no no no no no, trembling with horror and fright and tears.

"Spirit." Stern now, as close to angry as Spirit has ever heard him. "He was a murderer. He killed people." Stein takes a step toward him. "We stopped the birth of a Kishin. It's what we were trained to do."

The soul is right in front of Spirit, the glow casting strange shadows over his arms and shoulders. He swallows hard, head still bobbing from side to side.

"Stop it." Spirit glances away from the soul to Stein's face. The meister's expression cuts off his jerky negation entirely. "You are my weapon." No possessiveness, no affection, just fact. "You owe it to me to become stronger."

There is a long pause. Spirit's mind flutter between impossible alternatives and discards them as soon as they are considered. Stein looks like he's willing to wait all night - he probably is - and for all his apparent calmness, the new bright edge in his eyes leaves something in Spirit cringing and begging for mercy. In the face of that...

Spirit reaches out to seize the top twist of the orb and brings it to his mouth before he can reconsider. By the time his brain begins to panic, he is swallowing. His throat tightens for a moment, his gag reflex trying to leap into play, but the soul is too slippery and too far back on his tongue. He just ends up hacking, gasping for air, involuntary tears pooling in his eyes while the orb works its painful way down his esophagus.

Stein is watching him when he blinks his vision clear. The younger boy isn't smiling anymore, but his eyes hold a faint sparkle of something that might be amusement.

"You're supposed to swallow them, not breathe them."

Spirit glares at him. "Shut up. I don't see you trying to eat any such thing."

Stein turns half away, suppressed laughter now clear in every line of his body, and Spirit feels an unprecedented wave of gratitude for his meister, who can smile in the face of murder while Spirit just wants to puke. It makes everything seem...normal, somehow. This is probably more indicative of Stein's issues than anything else, but at the moment, Spirit would take even the normalcy of delusion over any kind of sane perspective.


	10. Reaction

Spirit is not doing well by the time they return to their apartment. Stein spends much of their walk back lost in his own thoughts, but when he refocuses on his partner Spirit looks like he's thinking about being sick again. His skin is utterly white, and there's a tightness at the edge of his mouth that indicates the exertion of more self-control than Stein ever expected he had. The weapon tries a smile when he notices Stein watching him, but the effort is obvious and Stein looks away to save him the trouble.

They are silent all the way back through Death City. Stein considers checking on Spirit's soul wavelength, but he doesn't really need to, not with the other boy's face broadcasting his current state, and he wants to spend at least a few minutes lost in his own satisfaction. The manic desires are sated, the unsettled buzz in the back of his thoughts is silenced. He can't remember ever being this relaxed, even when he managed to knock himself unconscious a few years ago in the midst of one of his descents. He can't see the gaps in the world right now, although they'll certainly be back soon; all he wants to do is appreciate the moment, bask in the stickiness of the blood on his hands and the dull ache of bruises and cuts and the utter solipsistic pleasure of destruction.

He gives himself until they enter the apartment. The door clicks shut behind him and he shuts his eyes, breathing in deeply so he can feel the rising pain along his ribcage, holding the air for a long, perfect moment. Then he exhales and opens his eyes to the world outside his head again.

Spirit has sunk onto the couch, hands covering his face, totally disregarding the effect his rain-wet clothes and stained skin will have on the furniture. He doesn't move as Stein comes towards him, doesn't even jump at a touch on his shoulder.

"Spirit."

The weapon shakes his head without moving his hands away.

"Spirit."

He lifts his face, stares blankly out the enormous window at the darkness of the storm outside.

"I think -" he begins, and Stein knows what he's going to say, doesn't have to invade his wavelength to do so; he can see it in the pallor of Spirit's skin and the movement of the muscles in his throat. "I think I'm going to be sick again."

Stein lets him rush to the bathroom, trails after him slowly enough that the worst is over by the time he crosses the threshold. He stands just behind the other boy, reaching out to rest the very tips of his fingers against the crown of Spirit's head. The blood on his hands is exactly the color of the weapon's hair. At least it won't show up like it does against the ash grey of his own.

Spirit lifts his head, scrubs a hand over his face. "Fuck." The usual emotion in his voice is gone, deadened by exhaustion. He sounds like Stein. "You've gotten stuck with a pretty terrible excuse for a weapon."

Stein watches his fingers pull Spirit's damp hair back from his face. "You and I have come to significantly different conclusions on that."

There is a liquid shine to Spirit's eyes that looks suspiciously like tears before he shuts them, and his laugh has the wet sound of a sob. "I think weapons generally should be able to kill Kishin eggs without vomiting up everything they've ever eaten."

Stein shrugs even though Spirit can't see him. "We can make that a long-term goal. The primary function of weapons is to kill Kishin eggs, at which you succeeded."

"Ha. Yes. Good. A successful kill under my belt. I've never even kissed anyone, but at least now I know what it's like to kill something." Spirit exhales in what is probably meant to be a laugh. "I'm not even fifteen yet."

"I'm twelve," Stein offers. "And technically I was the one actively doing the killing. You should really share the credit."

He means for it to be slightly funny. Humor he can deal with, even if it's often unfathomable to him; tears are another thing entirely, and he doesn't have enough experience with the latter to be any good at comforting. Spirit opens his eyes and stares at him for a moment.

Then he starts to laugh, proper laughter that scrunches his eyes shut and tears out of him uncontrollably. The sound is oddly close to sobs and entirely out of proportion to the cause, but it is still far better than the alternative.

It is some time before Spirit's laughter pulls back from the brink of hysteria, but when it does it takes the tears with it. Stein considers this a success.

"It will get better." He has no logic for this statement, no evidence to support it in the least, but Spirit tips his face towards the sound of his voice and opens his eyes. His blue gaze carries as much information as his wavelength would, if Stein bothered to look. His expression is that of a boy even younger than he actually is, desperate for someone, anyone, to tell him everything will be okay, and just at this moment the years between them and Stein's own youth count for nothing at all. All that he hears is the sure confidence of a voice outside himself.

"Will it?" His voice bleeds with the need for reassurance.

Stein reaches out to touch Spirit's hair again, fascinated with how pale the color makes his own skin look and the way the individual strands separate and stick to his fingers.

"Yes." It might not even be a lie. If he has his way it *will* get better. Stein has no intention of letting the potential in the other boy go to waste because of a weak stomach and an irrational valuation of life.

Spirit shuts his eyes and lets his head fall forward against his arm, muscles gone limp with exhausted relaxation now that there is someone else to lean on. "That's good."

They stay there for some time, the blood drying on Stein's clothes and skin and hands while he watches Spirit drift into the half-sleep of worn-out delirium.


	11. Revelation

Spirit isn't sure if Lord Death knows how he reacted to his first proper battle, or if Stein has quietly asked to delay their next assignment, but after the first spectacularly horrible fight he is left in peace for weeks. Before he had been desperate to do something, anything; the boredom of class and schoolwork and studying was driving him up the walls. Now, for the first time in his life, Spirit Albarn wants nothing more than to lose himself in the dull consumption of time. He spends hours stretched out on the couch, reading the same paragraph of a book over and over again while the back of his mind tries to rebuild his sense of self into something that can incorporate the deadly thing he has been born to be. He can't stand to think about it too long out in the light of his conscious mind, but it's there just beneath the surface, and so he has to do *something* to keep that top layer opaque, to prevent accidentally seeing too much of himself.

Stein is proving, again, to be an excellent partner. He's not any good at ordinary small talk, but he is usually willing to expand upon whatever he's currently investigating, and the flat monotone of his voice has turned out to be extremely soothing. When he's around, Spirit can set him on a topic and shut his eyes, listening to the hum of syllables that he doesn't have to understand and imagining what it would be like to be Stein, to be rational and distant and emotionless instead of crippled by guilt and fear. It must be pleasant, he decides, or at least easier, to be so removed from the world.

Spirit is currently lying on his back on the same couch, staring at the blank ceiling above him. He can't pretend to read; a very brief attempt proved worse than the alternative, which is to lie still and wait for Stein to return from wherever he has temporarily gone. The meister occasionally disappears for a day or two, sometimes between classes and sometimes missing them without explanation or apology. He always returns relatively shortly; he is never gone long enough to cause Spirit any real concern after the first time, but the weapon's curiosity is continually piqued by these semi-regular absences. Today is the first time Stein has been gone since their initial fight weeks ago. It has been the longest he has been in regular attendance all at once, and Spirit has been deliberately avoiding thinking about what will happen when he disappears. It turns out to leave him at extremely loose ends.

He is trying to wait it out, to go so far into boredom that time ceases to have any meaning and he can just let the hours slide by until he has company again, but the undercurrents of his thoughts are floating to the surface with nothing to disguise them. Images are flickering up that he has no intention of recollecting, topics appearing in his mind as if they have a will of their own and are breaking free of the strict ban he has placed them under. They are preventing him from focusing on anything else while he is doing his best to shove them back into the dark recesses from whence they came. It is not working particularly well.

When his tongue offers the all-too vivid textural impression of the single Kishin soul he's swallowed for the third time in a row, Spirit throws himself off the couch so rapidly he hit the floor before managing to scramble to his feet.

"Fine." He declares to the empty room. "I'm going." He storms out of the apartment, barely remembering to lock the door behind him.

The cold air outside the apartment helps distract his thoughts, as does the trickle of students down the alleyways and streets. Spirit still doesn't know enough of his fellow students to recognize more than one or two by name, but seeing other people behaving reasonably helps settle his mind somewhat. For one of the first times in his life, he doesn't want to chatter to anyone, so he walks fast and doesn't make eye contact with any of the vaguely recognized faces.

He heads for the forest, although once he sees the darkened edge of shadow cast by the trees he's not certain why. Stein is more likely to be in the library than out here at the edge of town, even if he has been bringing books back to the apartment recently rather than perusing them in the academy itself. Still, he keeps walking, past the ground torn down to dirt by Stein's feet weeks ago and past the border of the trees themselves. He looks for lingering red in the darkness of the upturned soil before he can help himself, but there's nothing to see before he pulls his eyes back up towards the trees.

The air in the shade is cooler even than the winter-brisk wind within the city, but the trees help to cut some of the chill of the air's movement. Spirit is glad of the high collar on his shirt and the warmth it offers.

He's discovered that there's nothing very dangerous within the woods, for all their foreboding appearance. They *are* a popular location for students to practice combat, and for some of the older students to practice romance, as Spirit realized after inadvertently interrupting one such pair. With his last awkward interaction on his mind, when he hears the sound of voices at a distance, he almost veers away to leave whoever it is in peace.

The sound of pleading roots his feet to the ground. For a brief, horrible moment he wonders if there's a Kishin egg hunting students, but the dappled sunlight of his surroundings is too normal for such paranoia. If it's not a demon, though...

He is walking towards the mumble of sound before he's even thought through the possibilities. He has no kind of a plan, but the mystery of the situation is doing an excellent job of filling his mind, and curiosity is entirely overriding any sense of fear he might have had. He is so lost in trying to understand the *words* that he's catching as he draws closer that it takes him longer than it ought to recognize the *voice.*

Stein's tone is suffused with something more than it usually has, a flare of emotion Spirit has never heard before. His words are momentarily incomprehensible; there is no point at which Spirit considers that his meister could be the initial voice he heard, but the situation is so deeply at odds with his mental framework that he comes all the way to the edge of the clearing where Stein is leaning over another boy before he is able to process what is going on.

Stein has a fist full of purple jacket, pulling the stranger half-off the ground in a move that would be laughably stereotypical were it not for the size discrepancy between them. Stein is perhaps half the other boy's size, certainly years younger than he, but he is utterly and obviously in control of the situation. The other boy's face is bruised, collecting color to match his jacket, and even from a distance Spirit can see the fear in his face. Stein's back is to him, but whatever is on the meister's face is draining all the blood from the older boy's face. Spirit has never seen someone look as bone-deep frightened as this boy does. His terror is weighing down the air, making it hard for Spirit to breathe and creating a wave of sympathetic horror that crashes through him.

Stein is still speaking; Spirit catches the very end of his statement. "I'm gonna tear you into little pieces. I wonder how I should do it though? Cut up? Or gouge out? Or simply rip apart?"

Spirit is deeply relieved that he has not heard anything that went before. His mental framework of his role, of his partner, of their partnership, is shattering apart under the little he is now privy to; if he explicitly knew what Stein had done to cause the other boy's expression, he suspects he would share it. As it is, his mind is recalculating, thinking faster than he has ever thought before, and the new perspective falling out of the breakdown makes sudden, illuminating sense and overrides his own personal trauma.

Stein is not his partner because he needs someone to follow. He is Stein's partner because Stein needs someone to hold him back.

Stein continues to speak, voice oozing dark pleasure. "That's for later, though. Right now I'll give you a painless death."

Spirit is speaking before he has had time to process his epiphany, moving forward with the surge of realization that has hit him, and his tone is so calm that he startles himself.

"Step away." It's not aggressive, just a statement that he expects to be obeyed. He had no idea he could sound that way, had no idea that Stein would listen to such an order, but as soon as he hears his own words he knows that the meister will comply. "I think that's enough, don't you?"

Stein doesn't jump, doesn't appear to be startled in the least, but he goes perfectly still, hand still gripping tight on the front of the boy's jacket.

"Stay out of this, Spirit. I'm going to do things my way."

Spirit stops a few feet back, hands shoved in his pockets, encased in the strange calm that comes of disbelief. "So then what? You're just going to ignore all the Academy's rules?"

From his angle Spirit can't see anything but Stein's hunched shoulders, but there is a faint sound of nylon shifting as Stein's hand uncurls. The stranger stays frozen for a breath, then whimpers and scrambles sideways, ducking away from Stein's reach before he manages to angle his feet under his body and gain traction to sprint away. Spirit lets him go, barely registers his departure.

Stein turns. His head is tipped sharply forward, his too-long hair casting his face in shadow; there is a single crimson splash of blood high on his left cheekbone. It is clearly not his; the rest of his face is unmarked. His glasses are missing, allowing the interrupted light to touch the purpling shadows under his eyes.

*When did he last sleep?* is what comes to Spirit's mind. *How did I not notice?* He has been distracted, but he had no idea he had been so oblivious. Or perhaps it is just the brightness of understanding that is bringing his gaze to all the things that are subtly *wrong* with the younger boy - the angle of his head, the too-slow blinking, the irregular pace of his breath. Has he always been this way?

Stein shuffles past him, feet barely leaving the ground as he moves. He slows to a stop just past Spirit's shoulder, so he is existing in the uncomfortable space just outside the weapon's periphery.

"Well? What is it you want to do?" Spirit asks the space in front of him. He can *feel* Stein listening, the silence charged with the other boy's focus. "Did you think you could simply do anything you pleased once you were in the DWMA?"

Stein takes a jagged breath, sighs it out. "I wish I lived in a world that knew nothing of the gods."

The words are jarring, more frightening to Spirit than what has come before. The claim is absurd, unfathomable. Spirit's mind briefly throws up a blasphemous image of the younger boy gazing down on the world, crushing it between his hands like the jacket of the stranger, before he forces it away. He turns his head to look at Stein, trying to get a read on his expression.

"Woah woah, do you seriously mean that?"

"Of course not." Stein sounds dismissive and faintly condescending, as if Spirit is being unbearably foolish by believing his words. "A world like that would be..."

The pause hangs heavy with potential. Spirit's mind is entirely still, so wrought with anticipation that it doesn't even try to guess at what the conclusion will be.

"Diseased." He finishes. The word is a relief, so much so that Spirit is able to ignore the flush of aggressive pleasure that clings to the edge of Stein's voice. The meister moves away, out of the clearing. Spirit lets him go; as the necessity of the situation fades, the adrenaline keeping his voice level and his mind clear is releasing its grip, and his whole body is starting to tremble with delayed reaction. He sits down right where he stands, lifts his hands in front of his face and watches his fingers start to tremble uncontrollably. He wants to laugh, but he is afraid that if he opens his mouth he will have no control over whether amusement or tears will follow, so instead he just shuts his eyes and breathes in the artificial darkness, waiting for the world to reassemble itself into rationality.


	12. Waking

Stein wakes with no sense of time at all.

One of the few pieces of furniture he has added to his room is a bookshelf, placed directly in front of the small window to prevent the sun from intruding on his personal circadian rhythm. This is wonderful when he is ignoring the demands of his body; he can turn up the fluorescent light and work for hours, morning, afternoon, night, without the considerations of sleep or meals to distract him. When he does eventually capitulate to the incessant demands of exhaustion, however, he emerges utterly disoriented. It feels as if the world has jerked out from under him and he's not quite connected to it anymore. He hates waking up. It's part of the reason he tries to do it all at once, sleeping for an entire day and then pushing himself until he is delirious with imposed insomnia and finally gives in to the siren song of sleep.

He sits up. Apparently he didn't bother to undress at all - even his shoes are still on, leaving dirt and grass stains across the top of his sheets where he fell. There is dirt under his fingernails. He can remember the forest at least, although it has the hazy quality that indicates his memory was giving in at that point. The burst of satisfaction when his fist shattered cheekbone is crystal clear, though, warming his blood even with the distance of recollection. His knuckles are bruised when he turns his hand over to inspect them, but his face feels normal enough. He is only slightly disappointed. It's always more fun when his victims fight back at least a little, but the pleasure of total dominance is enjoyable as well, even in retrospect.

When he stands up, the drop in blood pressure darkens his vision for a moment. When it comes back, he realizes that his glasses are gone. He really only needs them when he's reading - farsightedness is nothing like as crippling as the alternative - but he still takes the time to locate them, folded on his desk where he left them. It only took a few incidents with shattered glass alarmingly close to his eyes for him to start leaving them behind when he goes looking for a fight.

His eyes safely hidden, he braces himself for the world and opens his bedroom door. The syrupy golden light of sunset blinds him momentarily while his temporal sense rocks and shifts and re-centers around reality.

"So you're up." Spirit starts speaking before Stein's vision has cleared enough to see anything other than painfully bright light. "I thought you might have died. I was going to give you another couple days before I came in after you."

Stein squints into the window. His brain is adjusting as fast as it can, bringing the room slowly into focus as he acclimates to the daylight. Spirit is stretched out on the couch in what seems to be his favorite position, with one arm angled behind his head and the other half-heartedly holding a book. His dark clothes swallow the light while his hair is blazing like the fire it appears to be.

"No such luck," Stein responds. He considers staying quiet and just accepting the good luck of Spirit's presence, but curiosity has always been stronger in him than passivity. "What are you doing here?"

"What? Stein, I live here." Spirit's words are coming slower now, his face creasing into the concern Stein is used to seeing in other people. "We're partners? I'm your weapon, big black scythe who can't stand the taste of Kishin souls?"

His self-deprecation pulls at the edge of Stein's mouth as he fights off a smirk, but he still needs more clarification. "I thought you'd have requested another partner. One that doesn't go around beating people bloody occasionally."

There is no humor in his statement at all, just fact. Still, Spirit's face cringes into a smile for a moment before he regains control of it and looks away. Stein has seen that before too - that's the self-defense of amusement, the bubble of laughter instead of screaming because it's safer to give in to that option. It still doesn't explain why Spirit is still here.

The older boy sits up, leaning forward so he can rest his arms against his knees. His book falls sideways, entirely forgotten. He is still staring out the window into the blaze of dying light except for a blink-brief glance in Stein's direction.

"We're partners." He says it like that explains everything instead of nothing at all. "*You're* my partner." He shrugs uncomfortably. "It's just-" A pause, then he turns his head and looks straight at Stein. The light shifts below the horizon and the haze of glare vanishes off Stein's glasses. Blue eyes stare straight into green, and Stein feels as exposed as he ever has. It is a great effort to hold Spirit's gaze without looking away. He barely succeeds.

Spirit is talking; it is hard to listen to the words when he is fighting with an urge to run like he's never felt before. Is this how others feel around him? Even so, meaning seeps into his brain around the edges of his mental struggle.

"We're partners for a reason. I've been doing a pretty terrible job of being a weapon and you've been patient with me, you didn't go running off to request a new partner. It would be awful of me to do that to you as soon as you go a little off the deep end."

Stein has never heard anyone describe him in such mundane terms. He is not sure whether to be amused or offended. While debating between the two, relief takes the lead, surging into his muscles and leaving him feeling limp and drained.

Spirit breaks their eye contact, swings his legs sideways, unfolds from the couch. Stein can't move, locked in place by shock and the fear that he might fall over if he tries to move. The weapon comes to stand in front of him, looking down from his extra inches of gangly height.

"Let's go out for coffee," he supplies into the charged silence. "You've been locked in your room for a day and a half, I don't think late-night caffeine can possibly make anything worse at this point."

The pause begs a response. Stein opens his mouth and waits to see what will come out.

"Okay."

"You should probably change." Spirit grins. There is something in his eyes that is still on edge, something else he hasn't said yet, but the smile is genuine and the last gasp of panic in Stein gutters out. "You look like you've been sleeping in your clothes."

Stein looks down.

"True." He starts to turn to go back to his room.

"Ah, wait." He stops, looks back up at Spirit. The other boy is reaching out before Stein sees him coming, is touching him before he is able to flinch away. His fingers press against Stein's cheek, too forceful to be accidental but too gentle to be painful. Stein can feel his expression relaxing into utter shock, can feel his eyes going wide behind his glasses, and there is nothing he can do to regain control of his face. Spirit looks perfectly calm, utterly casual as the warm of his fingers heats Stein's face to an uncharacteristic blush.

"There." He takes his hand away and sees Stein's reaction for the first time. "Uh." His face goes crimson to more than match Stein's. "You - you had blood on your face." He reaches up to touch his own face without thinking to indicate the location.

"Right." Stein sounds choked even to his own ears but carries on anyway. "Thanks. I'll be back in a minute." He turns and retreats to his room to give his face time to cool, give his skin a chance to stop tingling.

It's the first time he can remember anyone casually touching him.


	13. Coffee

When Stein re-emerges from his room, his clothes are clean and his face is entirely under control as usual. Spirit is intensely relieved. He doesn't know what he did, exactly, to cause Stein's expression to collapse into readability, but seeing the shock on his meister's face was almost as unsettling to his worldview as their interaction in the forest a few days ago.

He has come to terms with the latter. Stein's disappearance for a day and a half helped, gave him time to reorder his perspective and redefine his role as the younger boy's partner. His mind still skitters awkwardly away from recalling the horror on the face of Stein's selected victim, but the basic premise at least is acceptable and becoming more plausible every day. He has gone so far as to take action to change the current situation, to improve the state of things for the two of them. He's not sure how to tell Stein this, and while he debates and panics the escape of a crowd and something to hold in his hands sounds like an excellent idea.

They walk in the one-sided silence to which Spirit has become accustomed. He rambles about whatever comes to mind - the comic book he has been reading is the subject today - while Stein listens with apparent focus. No one has ever let Spirit babble the way Stein does, and he appreciates it even if he doesn't understand why the meister tolerates it. Even with his skill at filling silence, Spirit's conversation runs dry when they arrive at the coffee shop a few blocks out from their apartment.

The shop is busy but not crowded; Spirit recognizes a classmate, tries a wave at Asuza Yumi that is not returned. He steers Stein to a table in the far corner, where it is relatively quiet and out of sight of anyone whose name he knows.

"Wait here." The implicit command rises so easily to his lips that he doesn't realize it was one until he has procured drinks and is heading back, and by then it is too late to do anything but move on.

"Here's yours." He slides one of the mugs across to Stein, who wraps his fingers around the ceramic and peers into the liquid like he's never seen coffee before.

Avoiding a topic has always had the effect of linking Spirit's mouth directly to his stream-of-conciousness, and this is not going to be an exception. He can feel the tumble of words as they scatter across his tongue, can do nothing to stop them even if he tried, but at least Stein has been tolerant of this habit of his in the past.

"Mine has a bunch of sugar in it, but I didn't know what you like in yours. You can try mine if you want, I think it's too sweet for most people but I can't really tolerate the taste on its own. Some people put cream in instead?" He hadn't intended that to be a question, but a nervous upswing is creeping into his voice and he can't stop the inflection or the chatter. "Or you can get mixed drinks, with chocolate or peppermint or all sorts of things. I just thought we could start with the basics, see what you like."

Stein has looked up from his drink. He is staring at Spirit with an emotionless distance that the older boy finds slightly comforting. He feels like he could say the most outrageous things, make utterly absurd claims, and Stein would maintain this cool interest without a flicker of reaction. It is a calming thought.

Spirit inhales hard, choking off the gush of words and shuts his eyes while he holds the air, willing his panic to dissipate. It doesn't, but at least his thoughts slow from their headlong rush and he feels like he might be able to breath between sentences. He exhales, deliberately slow, before opening his eyes with the same forced consideration.

"Yes. Coffee." He gestures to the mug across the table. "You should try it."

Stein lifts the cup to his lips without looking away from Spirit's face, which means that Spirit sees his faint grimace at the taste even though it is barely a flicker. He can't stop the grin that spreads over his face. Spirit is beginning to consider every reaction from his meister as a personal victory over Stein's control, and they are becoming more satisfying with every win.

"Try mine instead."

Stein takes the offered cup without releasing the mug still held in his left hand. This time the liquid barely touches his mouth before he is pushing it back at Spirit, expression falling into horrified distaste that is so clear Stein looks almost normal for a minute.

"That's dreadful. Do you actually *like* that?"

Spirit can't get the amusement off his face. "I do. It's much better than the alternative."

Stein returns to his mug. His expression doesn't clear until he has taken another, longer sip. "You are utterly insane, Spirit."

The weapon shrugs. "I won't argue the point."

Silence takes hold, settles over them for a few minutes. Stein is still looking at him. The consideration that was comforting while speaking quickly becomes nerve-wracking in the quiet, and the more edgy Spirit gets the harder it is to think of anything sufficiently relevant to drop into the gap between them.

Stein is the one who finally speaks, stepping over the wall of silence like it isn't there at all. "What do you want to tell me?"

Confusion comes hard on the heels of Spirit's initial relief. "What?"

Stein tips his head slightly to the left. The motion casts a glare of reflection that hides his eyes before it skates sideways and off again. "You've been wanting to say something since I came out of my room. Probably before that too. What is it?"

Denial never crosses Spirit's mind. "How do you know that?"

Stein smiles. It lacks all the warmth Spirit associates with the expression; all the pleasure is turned inward, a personal amusement he is not invited to share. "You're easy to read."

"Well. Okay, I can't argue that point either." He takes a deep breath.

"I - while you were out for the last few days, I went to see Lord Death and -" He has to look away from the meister in order to calm the onslaught of irrational fright that sweeps through his veins. "I requested another assignment."

There is a long pause. Once the words are out the fluttering panic subsides into the heaviness of resignation and Spirit is able to look back at Stein's reaction. There isn't much of one. His head is still tipped slightly off-center, but his self-centered smile is entirely gone. Spirit thinks there is a flicker of confusion behind the glasses, but even considering the possibility instills enough doubt in his interpretation that he rejects the suspicion.

"Why?"

Spirit is caught off-balance by the question. "Uh. Because we're students and we - that means we should be collecting souls?" The answer is so obvious that it turns into a question in his mouth.

Stein is *definitely* looking confused now. "But you *hate* it."

Again, the truth of this is too obvious for any sort of denial to be at all plausible, so Spirit goes with honesty instead. "And you love it."

He doesn't know it is true until he says it. Under the demand for a comeback his brain offers up the fact that it has known ever since he felt the rush of adrenaline not his during their first fight.

Stein's shoulders tense. His expression doesn't flicker beyond what he has already conceded, but the pressure of stress draws his shoulders forward and his spine back so he is somewhere between flinching away and leaning into Spirit. He still doesn't say anything, so Spirit just keeps on talking.

"It was great for you. It *is* great for you. It's the perfect outlet, right? And I need to get over my hangups anyway, if I'm ever going to be a proper death weapon." He means to stop there, but Stein hasn't relaxed and his tongue tries to fill the void. "Better that we kill Kishin eggs than beat other kids bloody, right?"

There is no snapping of tension this time. There is only the slow seep of relaxation, so drawn-out that Spirit imagines he can feel the adrenaline ebbing out of Stein's blood as his back slowly straightens and he leans carefully back in his chair until he looks almost calm. When he blinks Spirit realizes that that flicker of motion has been absent since Stein spoke last. When he smiles it is awkward and uncomfortable and inclusive. Spirit's throat tightens with amusement and pleasure and tears all at the same time at the attempt.

"Yeah." Stein finally looks away, angling his chin down so his hair falls into his face and casts his eyes in shadow. "Definitely better."


	14. Waiting

It is very quiet in the apartment. Stein has been sitting on the couch in the living room for hours, letting the darkness seep into his surroundings as the distant muffled voices of neighbors and the faint hum of the outdoors deaden into sleep. His eyes are shut, though he is nothing like close to sleep; rather the distraction of even darkened vision is more than he wants right now and it is easier to shut it out.

There is the creak of a door opening. Stein's lips twitch in almost-a-smile before he composes his face into blankness. The light is blinding even behind the protection of eyelids, but he is expecting it and so manages to avoid flinching.

"Stein?" Spirit's voice is loud in the oppressive silence, lacking all the sleepy softness someone not Stein might expect at four in the morning. "Are you asleep?"

"No." Stein refrains from pointing out that even if he was he wouldn't be after the question.

"What are you doing?"

"Listening." The physical pain of the sudden light has faded. Stein opens his eyes to the ceiling and waits for the blister of defensive tears to pass.

"To what?" Spirit's voice is strained. Stein can *hear* the tension pulling at the muscles of his neck and throat in the involuntary sharpness of his tone.

Stein could say he was listening to the night, listening to silence creep over the world, letting it seep into his bones in the closest thing to sleep he will get tonight. But that would be a lie so instead he goes with the truth. "You."

"What?"

Stein tips himself sideways so he can twist his neck back and see Spirit upside-down and bisected by the dark rim of his askew glasses. "I was listening to you not sleep. You're worried."

There is always a moment when Spirit considers lying. It is very brief, a tightening of his face into a mask that makes Stein think of what he will look like as an adult in a few years. Stein doesn't like the tension, but the capitulation into blatant emotion that follows hard on its heels is well worth the momentary delay.

Spirit huffs a sigh and drags his fingers roughly across his face. "I *can't* sleep." He comes around the edge of the couch and casts himself in the space next to Stein before the meister has a chance to react. Stein feels the tension of proximity seize his muscles as Spirit slouches next to him, like they have a single shared pool of stress and he is leeching it out of the weapon. Uncertainty makes him clumsy in his own body, makes every motion impossibly complex and carry far more meaning than Stein has ever known how to read. He has made an art of distance and he knows how to give in to wanton aggression, but the casual contact of Spirit's knee against his is ungluing the joints of his body and the cohesiveness of his thoughts.

He shifts away, pulling himself sideways and compressing his limbs together so he can keep air between their bodies without actually getting up from the couch. His knees end up trying to occupy the same space, but he knows how to deal with the eccentricities of his own body. It's the unpredictability of others' that unsettles him.

Spirit's arms and legs are limp with exhaustion even if his mind is not. The weapon's eyes are wide open with the entire absence of half-lidded drowsiness that Stein identifies as true insomnia, the tension along his jawline and at the corners of his eyes juxtaposing with the loose curl of his fingers and the droop of his knee.

"Have you slept?" Spirit isn't looking at Stein, just staring straight ahead like he can see something past their backlit reflections in the window, but when Stein shakes his head briefly Spirit's mouth curves in humorless acknowledgement.

"Are you nervous?"

Gestures alone cannot convey the conviction Stein needs. "No."

"I am," Spirit responds, as if it needs stating. "I know I should sleep but I just ended up lying in bed staring at the ceiling."

Stein doesn't need to be told this. With his eyes shut, he could hear every time Spirit turned over in pursuit of the rest he won't be attaining tonight. Once the murmur of other sounds vanished, he could hear the weapon's breathing, too fast and too irregular for sleep, creasing the night into waves of panic.

The silence goes taut with expectation as Spirit waits for some sort of a response. Stein is not good at lying, which is to say he rarely bothers to lie. In this case it's not necessary. "We'll be fine. We were fine last time."

"But what if we're *not*?" Spirit's voice jumps high on the last word and words start to accelerate out of him. "We'll be fighting a horrible monster. We could get really hurt. We could die. Meisters do die; weapons die fighting these things. What if this is too much for us?"

"It won't be."

"I don't how how to do this. I don't know what I did last time or if it was all you and what if you need me and I let you down? What if I get hurt or you get hurt?"

"We won't."

Spirit turns just his head to look at the meister. He looks exhausted and very young in spite of the years and the height he has on Stein. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." Stein has no evidence at all for this, but Spirit doesn't ask for anything but the reassurance of confidence, and that he can provide.

"Are you looking forward to it?" Spirit's voice is very soft, the words almost too quiet to catch. Stein could ignore them if he wants, just let the question go by and pretend he didn't hear.

"Yes."

There is a pause of perfect, crystalline silence, and then Spirit sighs. There is something of resignation and something of relief in it. The weapon shuts his eyes and lets his head fall back against the edge of the couch, and almost immediately his breathing slows into the rhythm of rest that has been so elusive for him.

Stein waits until Spirit is fully asleep in his awkward position before he turns to look at him, crossing his legs safely under his hips so he is compressed into the available space. The weapon is sprawled out, taking nearly half the couch even while sitting up. His eyelids are blue with exhaustion; when Stein looks long enough he begins to see the tracery of blood in the ultra-thin layer of skin. Red hair tangles along the back of the couch and fall over his face, a handful of strands catching on the moisture of his structure of his face is at odds with itself, childish softness remaining at his cheekbones and near his eyes alongside the angles of an adult jawline. His head is tipped far back until it rests on the back of the sofa, the angle drawing out tension in his throat and the back of his neck that will certainly hurt when he wakes up.

Stein reaches out towards Spirit's skin with his near hand. The other boy is entirely unconscious, still like he never is when awake. Stein stops his fingers just short of the weapon's face, so close that he can feel every breath as a motion in the air and the tips of his fingers can feel the warmth of the blood in Spirit's body. Stein's fingers separate the air over Spirit's face, tracing the arc of eyebrows, mouth, throat, never quite making contact but always about to if either of them shift at all. But Stein has steady hands and Spirit is very deeply asleep, and the stillness of the night unfolds around them without interruption.

Stein doesn't sleep at all that night.


	15. Encore

Their second assignment nearly gets them both killed.

They spent most of that first night stalking their first Kishin egg, with Spirit's tension racheting higher with each passing moment until the confrontation itself was something of a relief. This time he is barely in weapon form, still adjusting himself into the odd curvature of metal and the whispering echo of Stein's thoughts in his head, when the darkness of the alley next to their apartment separates into two distinct shapes and there is a wall of terror crashing down atop them.

Stein brings him up almost casually, swinging his right arm up and out without turning towards the oncoming wave. Spirit doesn't have time to panic; he barely has time to realize what's happening before he is taking the full impact of a swipe from an arm as big as he is.

His vision goes fuzzy even buffered as he is in this form. His head feels hollow and cavernously empty, buzzing with the aftershock of that hit. Stein doesn't even blink, doesn't skid or stumble backward at all. Spirit would be impressed if he could remember how to think.

The demon draws back a step, and Stein pivots on one foot to face it, bringing his other hand up to get a better grip on Spirit's weapon form. Spirit feels off-balance, bruised and dizzy and wrong-footed, and the forboding lurking in the back of his mind would be a major life concern were there time to analyze it. As it is he is scrambling to regain control of himself, to catch up with events around him so he can actually contribute to the fight and ideally prevent he and Stein from dying.

Weapons and meisters need to operate as a team. Spirit knows this the same way he knows how to speak; growing up with a sister in the DWMA meant he was steeped in the logic of the academy since he was old enough to remember. Knowing came early; understanding happened the first time he and Stein properly partnered. He felt like an extension of the meister, or maybe like Stein was the active part of himself; the line was impossible to draw and the distinction ultimately pointless anyway. Spirit assumed that the difference was that of compatibility, that with the right meister things would be straightforward and simple.

This is neither. Stein is moving one way and Spirit is a step and a turn behind, his lagging momentum nearly canceling out the meister's movements, and every time the Kishin egg swings at them Stein has to bring Spirit up to block and the impact rattles Spirit's thoughts loose. It's as if he's being thrown over a drop and landing hard on his back, the air knocked out of him and not certain for a moment if he is just bruised or seriously injured. And it's happening every time the thing attacks. Either the pace is increasing or Spirit's reaction time is slowing; he feels certain that he has less and less time to pick himself back up between blinding hits now, less time to attempt to sync with Stein's movements so they can go on the offensive.

The next impact catches the edge of Spirit's blade instead of the handle. The Kishin egg draws back, hissing at it's self-inflicted injury, but Spirit feels like he's been clawed across the face. His mouth is full of liquid and when he spits it turns out it's blood.

*Spirit.* Stein's mental voice is sharp with emotion that Spirit's muddled brain can't identify. It's not concern, at least. He would crumple under concern, give way to the rising panic and pain and probably get them both killed. It's something like frustration or perhaps confusion or possibly something entirely different.

*What are you *doing*?* That's evocative too, edged in a way that unsettles Spirit's mental equilibrium so it matches his physical struggle.

"I can't catch up," he tries to say. Something is still bleeding over his tongue and his voice is flattened by the odd environment of weapon form, but Stein hears or at least understands him anyway.

*You're going to get us killed if you don't.* The tension is gone but the cool truth of the statement is significantly more frightening than even the uncharacteristic tones of the previous comments. All the terrified adrenaline in the world can't shake Spirit's dizzy unbalance, though. They keep falling back into the darkness, Stein's feet moving faster until he's almost skidding with each step and can't take the time to look behind him for obstacles. Offense is out of the question and defense is getting harder and harder with every strike. Spirit can't see their attacker, hasn't gotten a good look at it this whole time; the lighting is too dim, the fight too ferocious.

Spirit feels the fall coming a moment before Stein actually goes down. The younger boy's foot catches on something, the edge of a paving stone or something else; the cause doesn't matter. Their joint balance tips too far behind Stein's feet, and Spirit recognizes the shift as unavoidable, tries to brace himself for impact even though such a mundane fall won't hurt him in this form and he lacks the strength to actually do anything. Stein stumbles backward and fetches up hard against a wall at his back. The jolt of collision rattles through Spirit but Stein doesn't react, although the impact must have instantly raised a bruise against his shoulder. There is no time to react. The Kishin egg is coming towards them, slowly rising in front of the moonlight, and Spirit knows that he is utterly done. Were he in human form he would be on the ground, too battered to push himself to his feet, and the only difference in weapon form is that Stein is somehow still holding him vertical. Spirit stares at the vanishing light of the moon and knows that this is the last thing he will see before darkness and pain drag him into immortal unconsciousness. The knowledge is distant, as if he's observing it from arm's length and it is someone entirely different that is bleeding and bruised and about to die. He feels cold in this vacuum of emotion, as if all the pain and anger and happiness he has ever experienced fueled the heat of his body and perhaps he can freeze to death in their absence.

But there is still something warming his thoughts. For a moment he cannot locate its source; it is too diffuse and directionless. Then it flares bright and he catches a backwash of fury and desire and realizes that Stein is trembling with adrenaline.

The meister *growls* low in his throat in an octave Spirit has never heard from him before. The sound vibrates through Spirit like he's the string of a violin and he lacks the motivation to do anything but let it. The sound might be Spirit's name; it's too low to distinguish properly, and it doesn't matter anyway. Spirit feels like he's coming apart into his component atoms, like he's disintegrating and being remade into something entirely new. He opens his mouth to try to speak and can't remember how to use his tongue, suddenly isn't sure he's ever had a mouth at all, but is speaking anyway, trying to ask Stein what the hell he's doing and how he's doing it and not making it past the opening syllables.

Then he does have a mouth again and he can't remember why that should surprise him. But the shape is wrong somehow; the jaw moves a little differently than he expects, the teeth are maybe too close together, but when he tries to focus on the foreign pieces it's his again, like it's shifting back as soon as he spins to look while his body rearranges itself in the edges of his focus. His vision is blurred by his weapon form when he tries to see what's going on but clears as soon as he focuses on his feet, and aren't they usually farther from his face than that? Is he holding something in his hands or being held? That distinction should be crucial but he can't place it. Then he catches sight of a reflection in his periphery and it's him, his own features caught in the shine of his weapon-form blade, and the world ricochets back into coherency. It shouldn't help to know that Stein's perceptions are bleeding into his, that his brain is feeding him Stein's thoughts as well as his own, but he is both of them at the same time and that makes more sense than he ever has alone.

The Kishin egg is entirely blocking the moonlight now, the darkness in front of them thick and solid with physical form. Meister-Spirit looks up at the shadow and the darkness swirls away from the glowing red of a corrupted soul at the center of the figure. An arm comes down towards him, and there is nowhere to dodge but stopping the movement is easy. The air gathers weight around itself, thickens into density, and the oncoming attack slows to a halt as the environment absorbs the acceleration.

There is no communication, not even mentally. Even the mild telepathy of weapon form is vastly slower than internal monologue, and Spirit doesn't need to fully form his thought (or is it Stein doing the thinking?) before he is moving. His foot comes forward, one long step while the other pivots in place to counter the motion, blade tipping sharply sideways through air that offers as little resistance as usual to him. He is bisecting the darkness before he realizes what is happening, the glow of the soul blinding him for a moment as it flares bright amid the collapsing form of the demon. There is a rush of satisfaction at the back of his brain and a wave of nausea in the pit of his stomach and he gasps, the night air cold contrast to the flush of pleasure on his tongue and the burn at the back of his jaw. His mouth is full of saliva and blood and he's not sure if it's from desire or illness or both at once.

As he focuses on the distinction between the two the world jolts sideways. His thoughts tear apart, forcibly separating a coherent chain of logic into the disjointed firings of random neurons. His vision goes dark again, his awareness of his body receding until only his self-image remains to remind him that he was ever anything but a weapon. He drops back into human form as soon as he can; his mind is still struggling with its own limitations, trying to work around the absence of brief expansiveness, and it's easier to try to remember who he is when he's in his own body.

Stein looks dazed, once Spirit is able to overcome the strangeness of looking at himself through outside eyes and process the meister's expression. He is looking at Spirit but not tracking him at all, staring at a point a few feet behind him rather than anything closer.

"What happened?" Spirit speaks before he can overthink himself into unintelligibility, before he can forget how to use his mouth again. His lip is swollen and at some point he bit his tongue hard enough that it is still bleeding sluggishly, but his words are clear enough even around the unfamiliar injuries.

Stein's eyes refocus on Spirit's face. He looks awed, pleasure and shock mixing on his face until he looks his age for the first time Spirit has ever seen.

"I - we used Soul Resonance."

The phrase is faintly familiar but Spirit can't recall what class he heard it in. He grins weakly at the meister.

"Oh good. I'm glad you know what just happened." He reaches out to clap a hand heavily on Stein's shoulder and notices distantly that the other boy doesn't flinch away from the contact like he has in the past. "Give me just a minute please. I'm going to be very violently sick."

Spirit has a split-second of Stein's face relaxing into a surprised laugh before he turns and stumbles a few steps away to puke up everything in his stomach.


	16. Distinction

Stein steps forward as he swings, angling his body away from the Kishin egg in a half-hearted attempt to protect himself from further damage. Spirit pulls through the resistance so easily that Stein has a flicker of suspicion that his weapon is actually getting sharper as they gain experience. It's not an unreasonable premise, given the circumstances; he'll have to investigate more closely.

It'll have to wait for another fight, though. He is relaxing out of battle stance already; the fight is over, even though the monster is still half-turning towards them and hasn't yet realized the severity of its injury. Stein always knows when the enemy is down, can feel it in the rightness of his stance and the focus of his weapon, and this combat is over.

It takes Spirit a moment longer to be certain, but then he transforms back into human form, facing Stein and looking at the disintegrating demon.

"Seriously, Stein." His voice is lower than when they met; after a few inadvertently hilarious months of perpetual octave-jumping, it finally settled and has been relatively stable for several weeks. Stein is still in the midst of his own voice changing, but his propensity for monotone has done much to offset the resultant cracking.

"I still wish I knew how you did it. At this point it's easier for me to watch your reaction than the egg itself."

Stein lets the corner of his mouth rise slightly in a smile. "I just know."

"Yeah, yeah." Spirit is staring at where the lost soul had been. Stein sees the muscles of his throat work as he swallows hard, sees the teasing smile fade from his face. He doesn't say anything. After the first few battles, after Spirit stopped actively fighting the aftermath, he left his weapon to do what needs doing without any prompting.

Spirit glances at him, jerks his eyes away with a cut-off laugh without any humor in it at all. "Okay. You've got five minutes to join the rest of us in sanity. I'll leave you to it."

Stein keeps his back to the soul, waits until Spirit is past before he shuts his eyes and lets the pleasure of destruction lose from its mental constraints. Adrenaline is already pouring through his blood; with no limitations it spikes from cold fright into pleasure without any effort on Stein's part at all. Heat flushes his skin, pools low in his belly in what he strongly suspects is a deeply abnormal reaction. Just at the moment he doesn't care; all there is in his brain is the sweep of ecstasy, so strong that he forgets himself under its pressure and ceases to be Stein.

He is laughing, pushing his hands hard against the exposed skin of his upper arms, revelling in the sensation of his body and the thrill of victory. When he licks his lips he can taste a splash of blood from the Kishin egg - it's bitter, less coppery than his own and without the sharp bite of Spirit's, but the flavor dominates his tastebuds when it hits them in something that is not quite pleasure but not pain either.

It is very hard to come back. It's not physically difficult - it is easy enough to open his eyes, to let mundanity back in to his senses - but the mental effort is astonishing. Every time he has to convince himself to do it, to ground himself once again because it's worth it for a reason he can't remember. The world stabilizes in his vision, dark and normal and horribly dull, and there is a flicker of hatred and loss at the back of his mind.

Then he turns. Spirit is facing away from him, back arched so he is looking up at the darkening sky, hands in his pockets. He looks extremely casual, which is a dead giveaway. Stein lets out the breath he has been holding for his moment of satisfaction, lands back in reality thoroughly, and crosses the distance to his partner.

He has gained several inches very recently; it is still surprising to him that he is looking down on Spirit now. He brushes fingers through the air over Spirit's shoulder, almost touching him but stopping just short of proper contact.

"You back?" Spirit asks the sky. The angle of his head is pulling his neck back and strains his voice so it comes out tense.

"Yeah." Stein knows what's coming.

"Oh good." There is relief in the words, a release of tension even though Spirit's head is still tipped far back, and then the weapon folds forward onto his hands and knees as the illusion of calm evaporates around him.

Stein catches the long trailing ends of Spirit's hair, holds them back from his face while the older boy's body heaves up everything he's eaten in the last twenty-four hours except for the most recent addition.

"Goddamn it," Spirit manages once the first wave has passed. "Every single time. You'd think I'd get over it." The last words stick in his mouth as his throat closes up again.

Stein reaches for an escaped lock and pulls it back with the rest. "You should really start tying your hair back." Spirit chokes a laugh.

Stein waits while Spirit tries to vomit up all the meals of the last week. A weak stomach has turned out to be an unavoidable trait, which makes this a regular ritual after every assignment. It doesn't matter. Spirit is excellent in the midst of battle, and he's learned at least a few minutes of restraint, which gives Stein the time he needs to sate his psyche and return to banality. There is an interest in this, as well. Stein has not yet worked out how Spirit can go so dramatically from focused killer to nauseated teenager, although he ponders it every time while Spirit is incapacitated. And Spirit is so *warm*, radiating heat so Stein's fingers gain degrees of temperature even insulated by the other boy's hair just from being close to the skin of his neck.

"Your hands are always so cold," Spirit offers, unconsciously echoing and inverting Stein's inner voice. "It's nice."

There's nothing to say in response, so Stein doesn't. He twists Spirit's loose hair into a knot that he can hold with one hand and lays the other against the other boy's overheated neck. Spirit hums in pleasure without lifting his head. Stein can feel the vibrations of the sound under his fingertips, and there is a moment of disorientation as his arm shifts with Spirit's voice and he forgets what is him and what is his partner. The air is heavy with damp and the lingering summer heat around them, and it seems that there might be no one in the world but the two of them in the falling dusk.

Spirit shakes his head as if to clear it of the last dregs of nausea, rocks back onto his heels. Stein lets the hair go but his fingers stay against hot skin. The other boy twists his head to look up at Stein through the curtain of his loosened hair. His eyes are very bright in the white of his face. Stein's hand feels like it has become impossibly heavy, as if he will never be able to move it again, while his arm tries to jerk away from Spirit without his brain's permission.

"Are you hurt?" Stein has never had to resort to small talk before, which is a relief because he is dreadful at it, but he's never actively fought with his impulses before either. Small talk seems the best distraction while he determines what is going on in his body.

Spirit shakes his head. "Nothing but my pride, and there's not much of that left at this point anyway." He rises to his feet. Gravity does what Stein couldn't convince himself to do, and the meister's body is his and clearly delineated once more. "I could do with something to eat now that I know I'll be able to keep it down."

"Let's go then." Stein shoves his hands into his pockets and takes the lead. He has always been good at feigning a patina of normalcy, enough to let him pass through life unimpeded by others, and although he can feel the curiosity in Spirit's gaze on his back the weapon says nothing. Stein knew he wouldn't.


	17. Contact

Stein stopped going to class entirely sometime during Spirit's first year at the academy. It started out with a single missed lecture every now and then due to Stein sleeping for a day and a half straight or during one of the periods he locked himself in his room. After their first assignment, Stein actually attended a full series of courses, showing up to lecture without missing a day for the six weeks between their first fight and the near-catastrophe of their second. But after they had stumbled upon their Resonance, Stein started missing days out of the week until Spirit realized he was going to lecture alone for the tenth day in a row, and the meister never came back after that.

Spirit doesn't ask what Stein does while the weapon is pretending to care about the material the professor covers. He decided some time ago that it was better not to know, about the same time he noticed that sometimes there's dark red still clinging to the edges of Stein's fingernails when he sees him again. He's just glad that the lonely separation of their first few weeks is gone. At this point he's not the only student partnerless in class, even most of the time, and Stein is always waiting for him just outside the door to grant him individuality from the wave of students.

The meister is rising from his lean against the wall by the time Spirit spots him, swinging forward into motion by the time he draws level so Spirit never has to slow his pace.

"That girl is looking at you," he offers with no preamble at all.

"What?"

Stein jerks his chin down in a half-nod. "To your right."

Even with the assistance of the head motion, Spirit half-turns in the wrong direction as Stein continues without pause, "Your other right."

"You would think I would be getting better at this," Spirit notes as he corrects and looks out over the sea of students. There *is* a girl, staring at him rather fixedly. She has nice eyes, wheat-pale hair falling just past her shoulders, but she looks away as soon as their eyes meet and he loses her in the crowd almost immediately.

"What about her?" Spirit asks as he looks back at Stein. The meister is watching him with the intent focus Spirit sometimes sees him turn on a textbook diagram or a Kishin egg. His shoulders relax slightly as Spirit watches, a bit of tension at his mouth loosens.

"Never mind." Stein turns away so his glasses catch the light and he is locked away behind a wall of opacity. If he didn't do this all the time, Spirit would find it infuriating. Instead, it is only irritating, the heat of the reaction dulled by hundreds of repetitions.

If left to himself at this point, Stein will remain silent for hours, so Spirit makes a valiant attempt to create a conversation. "We talked about group Resonance in class today."

"Oh?"

It's not much to go on, but it's more of a reaction than Spirit usually gets when he talks about class. He considers this a victory. "Yeah. I guess it's possible to Resonate with multiple partnerships, but all the members have to work well together. It takes some time, Professor Drexel says; she had Mira and Sid try it with Azusa and Lena today."

"Did they succeed?"

Stein *is* interested if he's actively asking questions. Spirit grins without turning his head.

"No, but I guess it's pretty complex and difficult to do. It's hard enough to get a group that *might* be able to do it, since everyone has to be relatively compatible with each other, and even then it's a lot harder for the Resonance to work correctly than with just two or three."

"Mmm."

One day's worth of half-absorbed lecture does not provide all that much to repeat back, Spirit is discovering. He is rapidly approaching the end of his knowledge on this subject; he hadn't expected Stein to actually be interested, or he would have paid somewhat more attention to the introductory information Professor Drexel offered before the live demonstration, which had been much more intriguing even with the lack of results.

"Maybe I'll go with you next class," Stein offers, and before Spirit can compose his surprise into a response he changes the subject. "We've got another assignment at the end of next week. We're travelling this time, to Berlin. Do you speak any German?"

"Uh." Officially students are supposed to learn at least one additional language for exactly these sorts of trips, but Spirit learned about five words of French in his first month and has made absolutely no progress since. "No?"

"That's fine, I do." Stein waves a hand as if him speaking German is a trivial fact, a bit of information he picked up on the side between his other hobbies. "We'll just stick together so you don't get yourself lost."

Spirit would be affronted if the implication weren't so true. They had a single off-site assignment early in the year, in New York, and he had wandered off to get lunch and gotten himself so entirely turned around that it had taken Stein five hours to find him again even with his Soul Perception. Or Stein had just let him be lost for that long, either to teach him a lesson or because he couldn't be bothered. At any rate, Spirit has no intention of getting separated this time.

"Great. Sounds like a plan." Spirit's stomach swoops unpleasantly as it always does at each new assignment. He keeps hoping that it will get better, that eventually he'll stop dreading the violence of the fights and the inevitable aftermath, but it hasn't happened yet. The fighting itself *has* improved; over the few dozen souls they've now collected, Spirit has learned how to distance himself while in weapon form, to let Stein lead while he holds them both back, to work as a unit instead of two individuals. It's all gotten much better since the first few attacks, when a moment of doubt on his part or a surge of pleasure on Stein's could bring them both crashing out of balance. But eventually Spirit always has to turn back into human form, the nausea and isolation hit him in full force, and there's nothing to do but wait it out while his mind builds new barriers and dims the memories as quickly as it can.

The touch on Spirit's shoulder is so quick and so light that he almost thinks he's imagined it, but when he glances at his meister Stein is just drawing his arm back. The contact in and of itself is trivial, but Stein almost never touches Spirit except just after fights when Spirit is too lost in his own physical misery to really pay attention to anything. Spirit catches the younger boy's gaze and Stein looks away too fast for the weapon to read any of the subtleties of his expression at all.

"You'll be fine."

Spirit isn't surprised that his discomfort is obvious; his face has always been an open book to everyone, and Stein is particularly good at reading him. He is startled by the reassurance, though; usually Stein will save any sort of comfort until after the fight is safely over, in those few minutes when Spirit's dignity is past saving and his memory is too hazy to form clear recollections.

He is sure all of it - the surprise, the pleasure, the confusion - is clear on his face, but he responds anyway, for his own sake more than for Stein's.

"Yeah. We will be."


	18. Humidity

The shower has been running for nearly a half hour. This would not be a problem in and of itself, but the room Stein and Spirit are staying in in Berlin is tiny, and the steam leaking from under the bathroom door is creating the approximate humidity and temperature of a tropical jungle. Even this would be fine, but Stein is trying to read, and the humidity is making his glasses entirely opaque within seconds of drying them on the edge of his shirt.

He is seriously considering some sort of ill-advised and vindictive exploration of the water heater since he is getting absolutely nowhere in his book when the water *finally* shuts off. This has no impact at all on the current state of things in the room, but at least there is the possibility of future improvement.

Since reading is a futile goal at the moment, Stein takes his foggy glasses off and sets them on the coffee table at the edge of the narrow sofa before shutting his eyes and listening to the various sounds from the bathroom. Running water drowns out much of the incidental noise of movement (though not, unfortunately, Spirit's occasional attempts at singing), but with that gone Stein can piece together much of the habitual process Spirit is moving through behind the door. The tap running and a soft whisking is the weapon brushing his teeth. The rustle of cloth is him getting dressed, the clink of a buckle his collecting his clothes from the day. When everything else is silent Stein can hear Spirit breathing, inhaling harder than usual in the damp air, hissing as he turns too fast and hits his elbow against the edge of the counter or his knee against the wall. When he focuses on sound, Stein can piece together almost everything Spirit is doing. He hasn't told Spirit he does this; it seems rather invasive, and while Stein himself has no issues with such, he is not at all sure Spirit would feel the same way, and avoiding the possible conflict seems easier than the alternative.

The bathroom door opens with an additional burst of damp.

"It's so warm in here," Spirit's voice complains to the darkness of Stein's shut eyes.

"You only have yourself to blame for that." Stein responds. "Well, yourself and the ventilation." He opens his eyes.

Spirit is standing in the open doorway of the bathroom wearing just pajama pants. Stein is sure he must have seen his partner without a shirt on before but his brain is refusing to inform him as to when this may have been, and it was definitely before the weapon let his hair grow out. The red strands are sticking to his damp shoulders, nearly reaching his collarbones, and his skin draws tight over the bones of his shoulders and the musculature of his arms and chest and Stein has absolutely forgotten how to speak. Some part of his mind that never turns off is cataloging his reaction with interest, but everything that usually informs Stein's behavior is gone, his consciousness as entirely focused on his vision as it was on hearing a moment ago.

Spirit is talking but Stein can't focus on what he's saying, which given Spirit's usual information-to-word ratio is probably not a significant loss. More immediately he's not regained control of his face, and the lack of dominance over what he is broadcasting to the world is horrifying enough that it breaks through his glazed stupefaction. He manages to pull his gaze sideways so he's staring at the ceiling instead of at Spirit and tries to contort his face back into some sort of removed distance.

"Stein?" Spirit's voice has lost the tone that Stein associates with pointless noise, though he doesn't know how long ago this change occured. "Are you okay?"

Stein is endlessly grateful that Spirit stops there and doesn't comment on exactly what about his expression is unusual. It means he can lie to the ceiling without having to come up with any sort of explanation. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"I'd hate for you to get sick while we're out on an assignment." Spirit laughs a little nervously, mostly to himself. "I'm not feeling so great myself, actually. I don't want to give you a cold or anything."

"You're probably just overheated," Stein's voice rationally offers of its own accord.

"Yeah, probably." Spirit sighs, sits on the edge of the bed. There is a long moment of silence while Stein tries very hard to relax. Every time he succeeds in releasing the tension in his arms his shoulders are tight again, and his shoulders are no sooner limp then his legs feel impossibly taut. This has never happened before, not with Spirit. It reminds him of the very early days at the DWMA, when he would go looking for fights for the satisfaction of breaking or being broken. The aching tension is the same, but there is an undercurrent of something else that he doesn't know how to identify, a strong desire for something he can't put a name to. Besides, it's been over a year since the madness properly broke free; the Kishin hunting and the minor experiments he has been doing while Spirit is in class have been enough to sate it. There is no reason at all it would come back now, and anyway he feels mentally clear other than the rising stress at the back of his brain.

Spirit yawns from the bed and Stein just barely refrains from looking in his direction. "I'm going to sleep, Stein. Hopefully I'll feel better in the morning. Do you want to take the other half of the bed? It's big enough for us both I think."

Stein stares at the white of the ceiling unblinkingly for a breath of seconds. "No." That sounded reasonably normal. "If you're sick I don't want to catch it." He pushes himself upright, swings his legs sideways without looking at Spirit. The avoidance feels obvious and strange to him but he can't bring his gaze up, not when the room feels so oppressively small. "I'll be back."

The bathroom is worse than the bedroom. Breathing in the enclosed space is like trying to breathe underwater, but the humidity and the heat are better than the alternative. Stein's body doesn't relax until he shuts the door behind him and locks himself in. Turning the light off helps too, but then he can't stop listening to the murmur of life in the other room. He fumbles to the faucet in the utter blackness of the interior room and turns on the water. The sound of the running water is even louder in here, echoing off the tile until the crash of the liquid is almost painful in his ears and Stein can't hear anything else. He leans back against the cool tile next to the shower and lets the noise drown out his thoughts.


	19. Fever

Spirit isn't sure there's anything wrong with him other than pre-fight nerves until the Kishin egg is dead and he's forced down the new soul and promptly tried to bring it back up. Usually they comes a point when the flush of nausea fades and he collects himself and he and Stein return back to their apartment or hotel room or wherever they happen to be staying.

This time, he follows the routine perfectly until he is waiting for clarity to return. He's never very good at judging the passage of time when he's regaining control over his body, but eventually he becomes aware that it has been a *long* time and the dizziness infecting his head seems to be getting worse, not better.

Stein apparently comes to the same realization at the same time. "Spirit?" His fingers are very cold against the back of Spirit's neck, and even the pleasure of the unusual physical contact is distant. The meister's voice is coming from a very long way off, past a dull roaring in Spirit's ears that he can't even properly hear.

"I don't think I'm well." He enunciates very carefully, so the words come out perfect and clear, but the sound of his own voice reverberates in his chest with the same distance that overlays Stein's monotone. It's very weird to hear his own voice at a remove, rather like listening to a recording of himself, and he isn't sure what he's going to say before the words come out.

There's a hand against his forehead, pressing against his brow and cheeks briefly. He thinks blearily that Stein's hands are really unusually cold, that that's probably not normal and the meister should do something about that, but forming the sentences to contain this concept is well beyond his ability at this point.

"You are significantly overheated," Stein's voice decrees from over his shoulder. There are some more words in there, but they slip through Spirit's grasp until the end of the statement. "Can you stand?"

"I can try," he responds gamely and tries to push himself to his feet. Balance is not usually particularly difficult, but just at the moment his center of mass seems to be swinging wildly to every place other than over his feet and the idea of getting his hands off the ground is the worst one he's considered in the last several minutes.

Stein's hands come around his arm and pull him upright. He wobbles and would fall, but the meister's grip on his arm is impressively firm and gives no such options to his body.

"Come on, Spirit." The sound still has that strange roaring quality, but the command goes straight through the haze of illness that has descended over the weapon and his feet obey even though he's not sure they can.

The dizziness and lingering nausea takes turns crashing over Spirit while the pair work their way back to their room with agonizing slowness. Spirit doesn't get sick again, not properly, but there are a handful of times when Stein lets him fold to the ground so he can wait and see if he's going to be or not. Then the distance settles back in and Stein half-carries him another few blocks.

The enclosed space of their room seems to be condensing all the warmth of the summer night so Spirit feels like he's hit a wall when they step over the frame. He drops onto the bed, or perhaps is deposited there by Stein; in any case he ends up half on the mattress and half off it, a leg and a stray arm dangling over the edge. He can't muster enough energy to care about anything other than the current stillness of the room; with his body supported by furniture and his head perfectly still, his vision is mostly clear.

He doesn't turn his head, but he can hear Stein walk into the bathroom and the sound of the tap running. When the meister comes back into view, he is holding a coffee mug half-full of water.

"Drink."

Spirit half-rolls sideways until he can swallow the liquid without pouring it all over himself. It's warm and tastes metallic, but his stomach accepts it without complaint, which is a pleasant surprise. When he lies back down the world seems slightly friendlier.

"I can't believe you waited until *after* the fight to become incapacitated by illness." Stein is outside of Spirit's wobbling vision, but his voice is faintly tinged with something that sounds a little like condemnation. Spirit's mouth responds to the tone rather than the words.

"I'm sorry."

"It's a *good* thing." There's a brush of contact against the top of Spirit's head. He shuts his eyes. The ceiling isn't doing much but shaking anyway. "Idiot."

It's not judgement in his tone, but affection tinged with amusement. Spirit hasn't ever heard that from his meister before. He smiles without thinking, loose and pleased behind the darkness of his eyelids.

"I'm glad you're not mad. I hate it when you're mad at me."

There is a breath of total silence, and then the sounds of another person's existence in the room pick back up.

"Sit up." Stein's hands pull at Spirit's shoulders with irresistible force and Spirit lets himself be dragged into a sitting position. "Lift your arms."

Spirit obeys. Stein tugs the edge of Spirit's shirt up and over his head and upraised arms with relatively grace, given that Spirit is doing nothing to assist. While Spirit is trapped in the cloth, Stein continues.

"I'm never mad at you."

Spirit shakes his head, forgetting Stein can't see the motion as anything other than a shift in the fabric over his face. "Yes you are. You're angry all the time." The shirt comes free and Spirit opens his eyes to blink at Stein's blank expression. "I just want to be a good partner but you're so much better at all of this than I am." Spirit laughs. It would self-deprecating but he's too tired and too separate from his own head to feel guilty, so instead it's just legitimate amusement. "And now I've gone and gotten sick while we're not even at the Academy so you'll be stuck in Berlin."

Stein's lips twist into a half-smile that doesn't touch the absolute stillness in his eyes. "I like Germany. Don't worry about it."

"I mean, not that I'm not *good* for you." Spirit is rambling now, vaguely conscious that he is saying more than he probably should and operating under the impression that he should just say everything while he has a chance. Everything seems very funny just now, and distant, like none of this will matter in the morning. "You're absolutely insane on your own. But I'm just supposed to make you *boring*, and in the meantime you're stuck with an idiot weapon."

"You're not an idiot. And I'm not stuck with you." Stein hasn't blinked, hasn't moved except for that brief involuntary smirk. Spirit can see the green of his eyes and the wall of deliberate distance in them that screams that he's hiding something.

Spirit reaches out, smiles. "You don't have to keep all your feelings tied down all the time, you know."

He means to be reassuring. Stein is very close to him on the edge of the bed; if he moves an inch his knee will touch the meister's hip. It feels very casual, very easy, even though Stein looks like he's holding back some sort of enormous emotional avalanche. But when his fingers brush the edge of Stein's face, the younger boy flinches backward before recovering his composure, and in the reflexive jerk his expression goes wide-eyed and scared. There is so much raw terror in his face that Spirit pulls his hand back, babbling an instinctive apology before his mind has any grasp of what has happened. By the time he is speaking Stein's expression is locked up again, he is entirely in control of himself, and Spirit doesn't know what's just happened and can't decide if it's very good or very bad.

"Lie down, Spirit." Stein looks away so his face is illuminated in profile. "You should sleep if you can."

The weapon lets himself slump backward, glad at the reprieve and the permission to fall into sleep but disappointed in a way he can't pinpoint. There is a tugging at his feet and then Stein is lifting his stray leg onto the bed and he realizes his shoes are gone and the meister is pulling the top sheet up over him.

"Thank you," he mumbles into the encroaching exhaustion. "For everything."

There is another pause in everything, like the world is holding its breath, and then a feather-light touch against his cheek, the cool of Stein's skin as he brushes Spirit's hair back from his face. Stein says something very low, but Spirit is pretty sure he's not supposed to hear so he doesn't strain for the meaning in the half-caught syllables. He lets the slowly spinning darkness behind his eyelids take over his consciousness.


	20. Novelty

Stein doesn't know if Spirit hears him. He didn't mean to let the weapon's name past his lips, definitely didn't intend for it to come out laden with the emotional tonality that it did, but the other boy doesn't move and after several minutes it becomes clear that he has dropped into the restless sleep of fever.

Stein isn't sure how long he stands there watching Spirit's eyelids shift as he wanders through what Stein can only imagine are the wildest sort of overheated dreams. Stein's foot goes numb from not moving. His breathing slows to a normal pace. His eyes begin to ache from dehydration and he has to remind himself to start blinking again. But his fingertips still feel like they're on fire, like they've singlehandedly caught Spirit's fever and are traversing his symptoms all alone without the rest of Stein's body catching up.

There is no reason this should be different. Stein has touched Spirit before today, touched him plenty of times earlier in the afternoon and later while helping him back to their room. But Spirit's delirious words are ringing in Stein's ears and the memory of Spirit's dodged touch is rapidly coalescing into regret and Stein has no idea how to handle this or the tingle in his fingers or the painful tension low in his stomach.

The couch was narrow and too short and Stein didn't sleep much or well on it last night, but none of those considerations are what move his feet around to the far side of the bed. He doesn't take his coat off, but he pushes his shoes free with his toes before stretching out across the free side of the bed.

Spirit is remarkably still when he sleeps. Stein would expect that someone with such an excess of energy during the day would be just as restless at night, but Spirit falls asleep quickly and stays almost entirely still while his body recuperates. Even with his skin radiating enough heat to warm the entire bed, he is showing none of the feverish restlessness that Stein has experienced during his rare personal encounters with illness.

This means that Stein can get very, very close to the weapon without the risk of accidental and startling physical contact. He angles his knees to align with Spirit's stray leg and curves his back in an echo of the weapon's, coming in so close that his own blood fills with Spirit's excess radiance and his body rebels, sweat spreading in a dividing layer between his skin and his clothes.

The sound of breathing is fascinating all on its own; up close, the process is so engrossing that Stein forgets to do so himself. He can see each of Spirit's lower ribs rise to visibility as the other boy inhales, can see the flush of overheated blood creating mismatched patches of rose pink against the clammy white of skin. The heat coming off the other boy is intoxicating; it envelops Stein in a haze of someone else's warmth, pours into his lungs when he inhales against Spirit's shoulder, beats a pattern of rushing blood upon his eyelids when he shuts them so he can focus on the faint salty taste of the air against his tongue and lips. It feels like Spirit is overflowing his body, spreading into the air around him so Stein can touch and taste and breathe him in without actually *quite* crossing into the contact that might wake the other boy.

Stein has never felt so warm, never felt so euphoric, and never felt so tense. His body is all but humming in pleasure and with tension wound so tight he can barely breathe even when he remembers to do so. Blinking is difficult to remember too; when he shuts his eyes his other senses clamour for attention until he forgets vision is his as well, and when he opens them he notices the irregular pattern of Spirit's dark eyelashes against his cheekbones or the way his chapped lower lip is barely caught on one of his front teeth. It's awful and it's wonderful and eventually Spirit will wake up, and that alone is enough reason to move but Stein can't make himself act.

When the weapon shifts, Stein jumps backward so fast that he's nearly off the bed before he realize that Spirit was just turning to lie flat on the mattress and is still deep in the throes of dream. It is a long time before his heart slows to its usual slow thump and longer still before he is certain enough of the situation to lower his weight back to the bed and approach again. He doesn't draw so close this time; instead he stretches out on his stomach, tucks his hands under his chin so he can keep control over them, and tries to content himself with just staring. His fingers feel achy and tense, and he's not entirely sure he can keep them from significantly more than touching if he once crosses that line and he's not sure that's what he wants to do anyway. There is a mental pleasure in being so close to someone else and keeping himself from crossing the gap, like the odd, painful satisfaction of pushing on a deep bruise.

Spirit's hair is going dark with sweat, the usual brightness dimming to the color of blood dried and forgotten. Stein wants to do something, both to help the other boy and to give his mind something to focus on other than the salty condensation on Spirit's skin and the sound of his too-fast breath, but he's never tried to nurse anyone but himself back from illness, and his own preferred cure is to sleep for three days until whatever is attacking him is gone. While this may work in this situation as well as it does for him, just at the moment it would be a relief to have something productive to do.

Stein shifts his weight to free one of his hands and gingerly reaches out toward Spirit. He trusts himself to judge distances and the other boy well enough to come within a breath of contact without crossing over, but now his fingers are visibly shaking and the easy logic of avoidance has abandoned him. Is this how Spirit feels all the time, lost and adrift within the heavy physicality of his own body?

Spirit doesn't move when Stein's hand touches his forehead, but Stein feels like some sort of enormous obstacle has turned out to not exist, as if he missed a step on a staircase and has gone careening forward off-balance and flailing. Spirit's fever heats his fingers and the damp of Spirit's skin catches on his palm, but otherwise there is no more to this than feeling the life of another human against the sensitive pads of his fingers and the fluttering heartbeat of adrenaline in his throat. That is more than enough for now.


	21. Recovery

Spirit wakes up feeling slightly more tethered to the world than when he passed out. His skin aches as if with sunburn, and his body feels shaky with fatigue, but he feels cool rather than blisteringly hot, which is a pleasant change.

When he raises a hand to his face, Stein jerks awake next to him. It's not until the meister moves that Spirit realizes Stein's fingertips are resting against the curve of his shoulder, that other than his outstretched arm Stein is curled tightly in on himself on the other side of the bed as if he might fly apart if he relaxes at all. Spirit has only a moment to process all of this before Stein snatches his hand back and comes up on his knees as he pulls away from the weapon.

The rapidity of the movement is exhausting even to contemplate. Spirit determines that he will be better off staying exactly where he is rather than trying to match the meister's movements, but Stein is watching him with a wariness that brings back piecemeal snippets of their conversation last night, so Spirit tries the most nonthreatening smile he can manage.

"Hi."

His voice sounds rougher than usual, harsh with lingering sleep and illness, but Stein's mouth flickers into a smile before his expression relaxes into his usual distant observation.

"How are you feeling?" He asks.

"Better." Spirit tries to wet his lips and finds that he has apparently burned off all the moisture in his body overnight. "Is there any more water?"

Stein slides off the bed wordlessly. Spirit blinks languidly at the ceiling while listening to the click of a cup, the rush of water, the nearly noiseless scuff of socks on carpet before the meister reappears with the requested liquid.

"Thanks." Spirit pushes himself up on an elbow and takes the cup. The water is reviving; he didn't realize how dry his mouth was until it approaches normalcy again.

Spirit sets the empty cup down on the end table next to the bed and turns back to the meister. Stein is not quite looking at him, or rather he is looking at all sorts of things other than Spirit's eyes. His eyes are flickering across Spirit's shoulders, hair, hands, outlining a perimeter that makes Spirit feel documented, like Stein is taking utterly thorough mental notes on every aspect of him.

"You're not feeling sick, are you?" he asks, for something to fill the silence and distract Stein from his cataloguing.

The meister meets his eyes finally. "Not at all. Are you recovered enough to travel back?"

"Dunno." Spirit swings his legs over the edge of the bed and tries to stand. He makes it to his feet, but his body feels like it might collapse under its own weight and there is a resurgence of dizziness and accompanying nausea. He lets himself collapse back onto the bed.

"Not quite. Sorry about that. You really will be stuck here for another day, as long as you don't catch whatever this is."

Stein shrugs without speaking. At least he hasn't broken eye contact again.

Spirit lets himself topple fully backward so he's lying down across the mattress. The contact with the sheets makes his skin flare with pain, but the support of the bed more than compensates and makes him reconsider his intention to move during the rest of the day.

"I'll probably be up for heading back tomorrow," he offers. "Just keep your distance and we'll be back in time for the midterm you won't go to."

There is a faint sound as Stein almost laughs, exhaling harder than usual. "Good to know. I - I'll go out and investigate the city."

Spirit is faintly amused by Stein's choice of words. "You do that. Have a good time without me, okay?"

"I will."

There is a beat of silence. Spirit turns his head to look at where Stein is still standing at the foot of the bed, one hand half-extended as if to rest his fingertips on the wooden frame. He looks confused and a little lost; it's not an expression Spirit is used to seeing on his meister's face.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"Yes," Stein says, but it is another moment before he looks away and his face clears. He is out the door almost as soon as he starts moving as if to make up for his indecision.

Spirit considers getting up and reading or taking a shower, but the effort doesn't seem worth the payoff. He turns over so he can sprawl across the entirety of the bed and lay claim to sheets not faintly clammy with feverish sweat. The other side of the bed is almost pristine; Stein didn't even pull back the blankets, just curled up over the top of the sheets and the comforter in his clothes. But the pillow smells very faintly spicy, a little like cinnamon, and while Spirit can't explain why this should remind him of Stein it is comforting nonetheless. He ends up stretched out diagonally across the width of the mattress, face-down in the pillow, and falls back asleep before he realizes that he is tired enough to do so.

Stein doesn't come back until very late in the evening. Spirit sleeps and lounges and sleeps some more; after several hours of this he does manage to get himself into the bathroom to rinse off the salty stickiness of the night before, but he immediately returns to his previous position. After another few hours he migrates to the couch, finally too restless to quite hold still but not willing to actually leave the room. When he pulls the curtain back from the window the sun is setting and the streets below are turning golden in the illumination of streetlamps. He strips the blanket from the bed and takes Stein's pillow so he can make a nest on the couch and watch the movement of the people a few floors down.

By the time Spirit spots the white of Stein's coat under the window, he is ravenous with the hunger of newly-regained health. As soon as the meister opens the door, Spirit greets him with "Did you bring any food?"

Stein eyes him sideways. "I see you're feeling better."

"I'm feeling hungrier for sure. Did you get anything?"

There is a hint of a smile at Stein's mouth, but he reaches into his jacket and produces a paper-wrapped square, which he tosses towards the couch with no further warning. Spirit nearly fumbles the catch but manages to deposit the package in his lap instead of the floor.

"Thank you! You're the best meister ever," he offers around a mouthful of sandwich.

Stein sits on the edge of the bed, for lack of any other reasonable furniture in the room, and leans forward to rest his elbows on the frame at the foot. Rare silence falls while Spirit's mouth is too full to allow speech, but he slows down a bit as he progresses and finally makes an attempt at conversation between bites.

"Did you have a good time in the city?"

Stein nods without speaking. Spirit rolls his eyes and prods further.

"What did you do? I'm really hoping you didn't do some sort of horrible experiment on an unsuspecting German, but anything other than that I'd love to hear about. I didn't do anything but sleep and shower and slowly starve to death."

"I did bring you dinner," Stein points out.

"And you are my favorite person for that." Spirit mock-toasts the younger boy with the last bite of the sandwich before finishing it. "Not criticizing," he explains after his mouth is available again. "Just informing. I thought you'd like to know how your patient was doing."

Stein is smiling faintly. He shakes his head. "I don't think you're my *patient*, per se. I didn't do much."

"Ah, but you have the right medical perspective." Spirit is half-teasing and half-serious and mostly just happy to be talking to someone and doing something other than drifting in his own thoughts. "You certainly got me back to health rather quickly. Whatever you did last night was very effective."

Stein goes stunningly red for a moment. The meister *never* blushes; the reaction implies a sense of guilty self-conciousness that Spirit is fairly sure Stein has never experienced in all his life. Besides, Spirit doesn't recall much beyond Stein carrying him back to their room, pouring some water down his throat, and putting him to bed, so the meister's reaction makes even less sense than it might in other circumstances.

Stein recovers himself rapidly enough that Spirit decides it's best to just forgo commenting on his flush. Mild confusion on Spirit's part is vastly preferable to some of the possible explanations that asking might bring on, and he feel a bit like he's invading Stein's personal space to have seen his reaction at all.

"Whatever." Spirit grins, trying to make light of the moment. "You clearly did a great job. Now just don't get sick yourself, okay? I'm a really terrible nurse."

Stein half-smiles and it looks almost unforced. "That I believe. I'll be sure to avoid it."

"Good."

Spirit soldiers valiantly on, dragging the conversation with him whether it wants to come or not, trying to act like Stein is just being his usual variety of insane and not off-kilter in a more pervasive and unsettling way. There will be time to figure it out, Spirit tells himself. Eventually he'll work out what has changed and then he'll be able to clear away the fear that is just visible in the periphery of Stein's eyes.


	22. Frustration

"What's wrong, Spirit?"

Stein has been walking next to his partner in what has until this moment been unbroken silence. While Stein never does much of the talking and often less of the listening, and silence in and of itself is nothing that bothers him, silence with Spirit around is more ringingly weighty than a thousand of the other boy's words.

Spirit stares at him in utter shock. Stein knows what he is going to ask and answers him with the same words so for a moment they are speaking in tandem, like Spirit's words are predetermined by Stein's thoughts.

"How did you know something was wrong?" Spirit says, and "I knew something was wrong because you've run out of conversation," Stein is responding. The phrasing is awkward on his tongue but it is worth it for Spirit's expression. Stein has to look away to regain control over his grin, feeling like the excess of displayed emotion is faintly obscene and not entirely comfortable with Spirit's eyes on him while his mouth refuses to obey his mind.

"Ah. Well." Spirit drags a hand through his hair, shakes his head like he's clearing the surprise from his brain by force, continues in a more normal tone. "We have another assignment."

"Spirit." Stein is mostly amused and a little concerned. "We have had assignments every couple of weeks for months now." He is speaking slowly, the speed condescending even if his tone is clinically cool. "Is this a surprise for you?"

Spirit rolls his eyes and Stein is briefly impressed by how responsive the weapon is to his tactics. He can usually count on a little patronizing shaking Spirit out of whatever mental circles he's talked himself into, but even so he is always a bit surprised every time and a little envious that Spirit's internal spirals can be so easily headed off.

"Not the assignment itself, no. But we're going out as part of a team, with two other meisters and their weapons."

"Ah." Stein gets out the token response and then has to focus all his efforts at keeping his face perfectly calm. Spirit is right to worry. He is startled and irritated, and both are made worse by the fact that he knows he should have been expecting this, with the group Resonance practice Spirit has described and the recent upswing of mock fights in the occasional details Spirit brings back from class. But he has been avoiding the subject and doing such a good job of it he didn't realize he was doing so until forced to confront it in this moment, and it is not a pleasant meeting. Uncontrollable madness is a regularity in his life, but this is betrayal of his detached perspective by his emotions and he is absolutely furious that he has managed to hide his own discomfort from himself so thoroughly.

"St-ein?" His name comes out broken into two pieces. When he looks at Spirit the weapon is leaning away, probably unconsciously but definitely noticably, and his eyes are wide with the start of fear.

It is very, very hard to hold himself back from lashing out at his partner. He's *right there* and Stein knows that Spirit will forgive him anything at this point, that an unspoken apology and a few days of silence will be the worst he will need to endure in exchange for the satisfaction of tearing into someone else. Spirit understands that there is something not quite ordinary in Stein; the fact that he is still here proves that he will stay no matter what Stein does.

It is partially because of that and partially because of the lingering, indelible recollection of moisture condensing on the weapon's skin that Stein doesn't give in. He stops in the hallway and lets the wave of students part around him, and Spirit stops with him because he can't possibly know that the last thing Stein wants right now is someone around. The meister carefully takes off his glasses and holds them out without speaking; there is only the briefest of confused pauses before Spirit reaches to take them, freeing Stein's hands so he can press his palms against his eyelids.

He has never been this frustrated by the DWMA before. There had been something akin to fright when he first arrived, before he met Spirit, some tinge of nervousness at being assigned to someone he had never before met, but that had vanished upon seeing Spirit and has not returned. He has simply stopped wasting his time with classes and with his fellow students, and that has been exactly as he likes it. The idea of interacting with other people - Spirit is no kind of "other" at this point - is sickening. Stein doesn't see the point of pretending to be normal to assuage other people's feelings, and this perspective is rarely well-received. He has become accustomed to the solitude of his daylight hours and the sparkling exhaustion of living with Spirit and the very idea of adding complications to that is causing his blood to flare with rage. But he has been doing so *well*, and it is frustrating to even think in those terms, but he knows it pleases Spirit to sidestep the entire question and he doesn't want to unsettle his partner. That thought alone - that he is more concerned about Spirit's short-term contentment than his own desires - is worth further inspection, but there is no time for it right now. Stein has never tried to talk himself down out of a mood, has never felt the need for it before, and it is proving much harder than he would ever have guessed.

Stein can hear Spirit shift his weight from one foot to the other, hears the weapon inhale in preparation to speak and *doesn't* hear anything else. He will be impressed with Spirit's self-control later.

After what feels like an impossible eternity of angry blood pounding in his ears and the distraction of painful pressure against his eyes, the leading edge of narcissistic ire passes. By the time Stein lowers his hands and opens his eyes, the hallway is entirely empty of students except for Spirit, holding the glasses half-extended towards the meister and watching him with wide blue eyes free now of anything but concern. Stein is glad of that; it is the only expression he can imagine that negates the flare of emotion of his side before it even begins.

"Thank you," is all he says as he takes his glasses back and careful aligns them over his eyes. Spirit's hand is still extended, fingers closed over the shape of the frame that they no longer hold.

"Are you okay?" he asks timidly.

Stein cannot explain. He can barely explain to himself, the flood of disdain for the world that he has been ignoring for months, the destructive rage that burnt through him at the idea of being forced to interact with *anyone*, the irrational possessiveness that makes the idea of *sharing* Spirit with anyone unfathomable. He will never find the words to express these to his foolish, endearing, trusting partner, not when Spirit has probably never felt anything so violent in all his life.

Stein has always had a distant pity for those who seem to sustain a more normal mental balance. For the first time he wonders if he has had it backward.

"Tell me more about the assignment," he says instead of answering, but Spirit hears the response and not the lack. Relief is so strong in his voice when he speaks that it starts to seep into Stein's tense shoulders, relaxing him against his conscious desire.

"They've assigned six of us, three sets of partners, all one weapon-one meister. There's not many meisters with multiple weapons and they thought this would be easier. Two of the partners you know, Mira and Sid."

Stein blinks at Spirit, shakes his head, starts moving forward toward the assignment wall at the front of the building. Spirit jogs to catch up.

"We fought against them in class that first time, the knife and her meister," he offers, and now Stein does remember, a broad-shouldered boy with an easy smile and a skinny girl with hair in dreadlocks that fell over her face to obscure her features. The boy's wavelength was impressively steady for someone their age, the girl's jittery with shyness but sharply aggressive underneath. He has to admit they make a decent team, and the girl - Mira's? - shyness should keep awkward attempts at normal interaction to a minimum.

"The other pair I don't know as well. The boy is Roger; he wields a hammer, but he's not so good with her. I think the idea is to pair us four with he and his partner so we can help keep track of them, show them the basics while we're out. They're all nice; at least we didn't get partnered with Azusa."

"Mm." Stein isn't really listening anymore, lost in thinking through the best way to make it through this assignment so he can go back to his new habits. Spirit is now enumerating the various minor irritations his classmates present, working his way back to general delight in everyone and everything.

Stein remembers the wall of assignments being enormously large, looming over him as if it might topple forward and crush him beneath its weight at any moment. He had not realized how long it had been since he actually checked it himself until he stands before it now and can reach the top row of hanging tags. His growth is helpful; he and Spirit are now in the second-to-top row, replaced along the bottom edge by the perpetual flow of inbound teenagers. He slides the wooden tag off their hook and flips it over to inspect the details on the back.

"I haven't actually looked at the specifics," Spirit is offering now. "They just told us in class that we were going out as groups and I wanted to warn you before you found out all at once on the board. What's it say?"

"Not much." Stein replaces the tag and turns to walk out of the building, Spirit just to his right and a half-step behind. The weapon hovers in Stein's blind spot; it would be unsettling if it weren't Spirit.

"Just the location and the partner details, like you said. The time, next week. And the name."

"What's it called?"

Stein shrugs. His anger has dissipated fully now. The low-hanging sunlight coming in through the windows flickers past his glasses to burn his eyes and blind him for a moment.

"It didn't have any useful information," he declares into the wash of light. "What kind of a name is Star Clan, anyway?"


	23. Teamwork

It is still midafternoon when they arrive at their target location, uncharacteristically bright and sunny for an assignment from the DWMA. All of Spirit's previous experience is tinged with grey or darkness, fighting in the rain or the wee hours of the morning, when the lighting is so minimal even Stein's hyper-reflective glasses are just ordinarily translucent. The brightness of overhead lighting is odd; it makes it hard for Spirit to remember what they are doing.

Mira has been in weapon form since they met up. Spirit barely knows her to talk to; he is intimately familiar with the silhouette of her hair over her face, since she hasn't missed class yet that he's seen, but he's never heard her voice and she rarely looks up at anyone other than her partner. Sid is more chatty, broader than any teenage boy has a right to be and so loud that anytime he speaks the entirety of the class goes silent, but he rarely talks to his partner out loud. They keep glancing at each other in a way that Spirit is sure carries an infinity of meaning that he doesn't know how to read.

Stein is less stiff with fury than he was originally; time to consider the prospect seems to have dulled his reaction somewhat, but he is even more distant than usual, like any sort of communication will give away some valuable part of himself that he doesn't want to share. He is walking a full pace ahead of the rest, Spirit trailing in his wake and the other four clustered just behind him. Spirit wonders if Stein knows he has fallen into the leadership role, wonders if he cares, wonders if he intended it. The set of the meister's shoulders fails to convey any information, even to Spirit's experienced eyes.

That just leaves Marie and Roger, who are both valiantly keeping a running conversation in spite of the weight of silence pressing down from the others. Marie keeps trying to engage Spirit with generic small talk, but even though Spirit is willing they don't know each other well enough to break out of acquaintance-level conversation, and every time Spirit starts to get going he can *feel* Stein listening, and that knowledge makes him nervous. It's easier to just stay quiet for once and listen to the low chatter of the two next to him.

Spirit hasn't really watched other partners since the first few weeks at the DWMA, when everything around him made him feel inadequate. After his first proper fight with Stein the lingering fear of failure faded away along with the assumption that he could compare his meister to any of his classmates. Stein is Stein, and any comparison is so absurd that Spirit just stopped trying. This is true and has been true and is still true, but it is still odd to hear his classmates talking like they would to anyone else, like their partner is just another person. It is a little charming and a little strange and it makes Spirit irrationally, passionately happy that he is partnered as he is.

Marie is giggling at something Roger has said, combing her fingers through her hair in a way that Spirit has just started to recognize as flirtatious, when Stein drops.

Spirit would have sworn he was watching the other partners, that he was paying no attention to Stein, but when his meister throws himself to the ground the older boy is moving to mirror him before he realizes what has happened. There is a whistle of something cutting through the air just above their heads, and then several things happen at once. Stein is on his feet again nearly before the space over his head is clear, reaching out towards Spirit without even speaking. Spirit is transforming as he lurches forward with significantly less grace than his meister and much less willingness to stand all the way up. There is a sound of half-a-scream from Marie that is abruptly cut off as she shifts. And the friendly shadows of the trees around them harden into bodies that are decidedly the opposite. Spirit gets an impression of too many teeth and glowing eyes before he finishes both his movement and his transformation and Stein catches him and gets the weapon's handle up in time in stop an incoming attack

Spirit is reminded briefly of his second assignment. His meister has become very good at maintaining his presence of mind and his awareness of surroundings; it has been years since they were caught unawares. But the six of them have never fought together before, and while each pair is operating smoothly the pieces are disjoint and clumsy. Stein is half-speaking, trying to parse orders that he cannot speak fast enough, and Roger is trying to listen to them while Sid doesn't seem to hear at all. Attacks are raining down so fast that Spirit can't even tell how many opponents there are; he doesn't have any time to brace himself before blows come in, and every one hits with bruising force. But he is stopping them; Stein is getting him up to block in time, barely, and that's enough for now but not promising for any sort of recovery.

Spirit is confident that he and Stein are a good team. He knows how good they are, can remember only a handful of fights that were anything like threatening, and their survival attests to their ability to handle that. But the sheer *number* of attackers is more than they can handle alone; Sid is out on the fringes when Spirit catches a glimpse of him, Roger and Marie somewhat closer but still too distant to cover Stein's attacks, and Sid's attacks aren't coordinated enough with theirs to ever do any damage to the eerily human figures around them. They are all moving too fast for Spirit to see properly, but they look like *people*, if somewhat wrong around the eyes and mouth, and that is far more unsettling than all the horrors that monstrosity has offered thus far.

Spirit can feel Stein's rising frustration, distantly still in their current state, but rapidly increasing until he can feel a headache coming on from the meister's bleeding tension even without any Resonance. There's something else, a hesitance that is clearly not related to their fight but something else holding back the irritation. It's extremely odd for Stein to be so conflicted during a fight; he usually becomes so single-minded that his desire for violence entirely subsumes Spirit's personal compunctions until they regain some level of separation. At least he's fighting well enough to keep the incoming hits at bay, but his shifting focus is unusual and that is deeply worrying.

An arm comes in, catches on Spirit's handle with force that has nothing to do with humanity. Spirit feels like he's been thrown against a wall, catching his ribs so hard that when he tries to inhale his lungs don't work and he just gapes silently at the air.

*Spirit?* Stein's mouth is set with fury but his mental tone is strangely anguished.

Spirit is honestly not sure that he won't just die, that his body won't forget how to work and leave him to slowly suffocate with air all around him, but when he tries to breathe once more everything moves correctly and the rising panic subsides somewhat.

*I'm okay,* he lies. *What else can we do?*

He means it rhetorically. Stein is already moving faster than Spirit could if he tried, and Spirit is taking so much abuse that he's a little worried there may actually be lasting damage this time. They are too far away from their classmates for any sort of tactical maneuver; even Resonance won't help them enough. Stein sighs as his hesitancy capitulates to frustration, and there is something of Spirit's name in the unspoken sound. The mental shock of Resonance hits Spirit hard but not unpleasantly as the relative stability of Stein's physical body balances his own fraying strength. He has the ever-bizarre sensation of being held and holding at the same time, the dizzying overlay of Stein's vision over his. This is as normal as the experience of spilling into another person can ever be, so standard at this point that they don't even break their pattern of movement even though blows start stopping far short of them.

But the crossing over doesn't stop. Usually there is a point where Spirit-Stein can feel himself in both places, can look through either blue or green eyes at will, but he never forgets that he's still Spirit Albarn in the end. This time is different. He keeps going, right past the careful balance point in the middle until he's fully the meister, moving outrageously fast and wielding a scythe like he was born doing so, glasses pressing into the grooves of habit just over his ears and against the bridge of his nose. There is a moment when this seems wrong, when weapon-Spirit tries to cling to his sense of self, but the muscle memory of this body is too strong and the mind capitulates to the insistence of the physical form.

No sooner is Spirit entirely convinced he's always been a scythe-meister, always had a weapon-partner named Stein, then the process is sliding backwards again and he's coming back into his usual perspective. Before the transition is complete, it stabilizes, more perfectly balanced between the two options than Spirit has ever known before. He is both weapon and meister in absolutely equal parts, trading off control of either with Stein like they've always done this, like they've always been the same two minds sharing two bodies and two forms. A stray hit finally gets past the weapon's guard. It is Stein who takes the force of the impact across his mouth, but Spirit's pointless defiance that spits blood at the enemy, and then Stein who bares his teeth in what only they would ever consider a smile.

He can feel the others partners too, now. There is a feral sharpness off to the north, around the other side of the wall of opponents before him, and the focus of precision destruction back over his shoulder. He swings into an enemy's body so hard that blood splashes back over both his blade and his face. It burns with the pain of acidity but there is a foreign satisfaction in his gut that is pleased with the mess.

*Come around to flank them.* He almost doesn't have to put words to the thought; it is transferred out to the team to the north before it's entirely formed, the same way he has expressed himself to the other part of him in the past, when he was fragmented into two. They start moving instantly, like they are a distant extension of his body and will. The thought is exhilarating; he is laughing before he realizes what he is doing and then he can't stop and can't recall why he should want to.

The others are moving too, without any conscious decision on his part of what to do, but he knows it is what they should be doing. It feels natural, like the complexity of walking, now become so simple he can do it without thinking. He can't recall why this seemed frightening a moment ago, why he was letting himself take hits that he can block or dodge or just ignore now. Why was he ever limited by a single body? The idea is absurd and amusing and faintly tragic.

More blood now, crashing across him and leaving splashes of colorful life where it lands. This must be what is it like to be a god, to be powerful enough to play with the heartbeats of others. He is walking forward now, casually swinging almost without having to think about it. There is no danger here. He is not sure why he ever thought there was. There is something else too; the power is intoxicating and thrilling too. Imagine the good he could do with this, the wrongs he could right, the pain he could stop. The possibilities are unfurling before him and they are beautiful, as if he has discovered an entire new spectrum of color and can create a thousand new masterpieces with it.

There is no one in front of him. He has been moving forward, cutting through the ugliness in his way, seeing and destroying fallen souls in a single strike, and now there is nothing left. He stumbles, catches himself, comes to a halt. There is a sudden surge of foreboding, of excruciating panic, and then the world comes apart.

Spirit is back in his own body and his own mind so quickly that for a moment he doubts his ownership of this form. He topples out of his transformation, every bruised muscles and broken vein screaming for attention, choking on his own breath as his stomach doesn't wait for humanity before rebelling. Stein is right next to him, inexplicably on hands and knees; the meister is always ecstatic at the end of a fight, Spirit's suddenly returned memory tells him, why has he gone grey and why are his arms shaking? The world is spinning like Spirit's never known before; it's far worse than just a disconnect with gravity. His consciousness seems unsure where it wants to land, and he keeps having the sickening sensation that he's in the wrong body, that he has stolen someone else's physical form and there is another person with his own.

Spirit would swear that imminent death couldn't get him on his feet. But when the shriek cuts through the air, he and Stein jerk to look at each other. When he meets the younger boy's eyes, the world stabilizes for a moment, and when Stein shoves himself to his feet, Spirit is transforming even though he would have sworn he couldn't stand unassisted. And then they are off, half-running to avoid falling flat on their faces, lacking all the fluidity of their usual movement but moving nonetheless, stumbling through the woods towards the sound.


	24. Consequences

Stein has no idea what just happened, which is to say he has a good bet but no real recollection. His memories are vanishing with every tottering step, and if he had any time to spare he would stop where he stands and drag them up like the details of a fading dream and *force* himself to remember. But there is no time, less than no time, and so he's dragging himself forward with a body that won't obey and a mind too stubborn to accept no for an answer and losing something inexplicably beautiful with every step he takes.

He hears the heavy breathing of combat and the crunch of leaves under shifting feet just before he clears the last clump of foliage and comes out in the middle of a violent and nearly silent fight. Sid and Mira are entirely different in their fighting style than he and Spirit and impressively effective. Sid blocks with his arm and then comes in low with the knife when the enemy is trying to dodge away from the force of his parry. Stein lacks the raw physical power to imitate the technique and Spirit isn't suited for the tight cuts Sid is using right now, but it is a beautiful thing to see, controlled and precise and gorgeous. Stein actually comes to a stop and drops out of his fighting stance for a moment while he watches, his mind going blank with the impact of the scene.

Sid and Mira are fighting what must be one of the last of their targets, an enormous man who seems normal except for his oversized form, which makes even stocky Sid look like a twelve-year old. Then Sid darts left with surprisingly speed, the enemy turns to follow, and Stein gets a glimpse of pinpoints of glowing red in the thing's shadowed brow and the resemblance to humanity evaporates. Sid is bruised and bleeding, his eye swelling badly; he won't be able to see come the nightfall, but for now he's got enough left to take on this last holdout, who is much more badly hurt than the other meister. Even as Stein watches Sid ducks low to drive his shoulder into the thing's stomach and brings Mira around, and that's the end of the real fight. The rest is just cleanup.

As the target stumbles forward, hissing with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, it moves out of Stein's vision so he can see the rest of the space.

There is blood. A lot of blood. Stein has a much higher tolerance for the stuff than most, and his mind calmly offers up the observation that there is more spilled across the ground than any one person can lose and live. By the time his eyes trace the path back to Roger, he has already done the calculation. There are pints and pints of blood in the human body, and life can remain with significantly less than one would expect, but the ground is soaked in what must be primarily Roger's and there is no way to help him now. It is useless to try to do anything, but he has already dropped Spirit from fingers gone oddly weak and is stumbling towards where Marie has folded up over her meister.

There is far too much to see once Stein skids to his knees next to the two of them, like a nauseatingly visceral review of the anatomical plates the meister has studied in various textbooks. There is blood all across the left side of Marie's face, dripping sluggishly from a wound that doesn't bode well for her continued vision, but she is a picture of health next to her partner. Roger has taken a hit right down the center of his torso, so deep that the white bone of his ribcage is visible and his abdomen is a mess of broken skin and muscle and organs. He looks like a puzzle that Stein could put back together if he only knew how, but the clinical books are absolutely no good when Stein's hands are slippery with blood and he has none of the practical knowledge he needs to staunch the now-sluggish gush of life from the other student or even to ease the agony in Roger's too-white face. Someone is talking but Stein doesn't listen, and then Spirit is saying something and Stein identifies his voice as important but can't force himself to hear, not when there are bigger problems that he cannot solve right in front of him. When he looks up from his vain attempts to do *anything*, Roger coughs, inhales hard with a truly horrible sound, and doesn't exhale. Stein blinks into Soul Perception in time to see the other boy's soul flicker out like a candle and his body turn into nothing more than empty flesh.

Marie is hyperventilating, so far past crying into shock that she is hardly breathing on each inhale. Stein feels very cold and very calm and knows that he *should* feel something more than this and cannot bring up anything else. There is absolute silence for a very long moment, as all five of them come to the same realization and before anyone has the nerve to say anything. There is the sound of Spirit settling to the ground with all the elegance of a cut marionette, but for once Stein can't bring himself to even glance at his partner. Kishin eggs are different, he notes absently. There's not generally a body per se, just the remnants of the soul, and the satisfaction of success as they unravel is enough to fire his veins with bliss. This has the heavy awfulness of failure.

Sid is still on his feet, speckled with blood and sweat and still gripping Mira's handle so tightly his knuckles have gone pale. Spirit has both hands over his mouth, one atop the other, and his eyes are wide and stunningly blue in his bloodless face. Marie is well on her way to passing out, the way she's breathing, and her soul wavelength is wavering with panic and grief and pain.

Stein gets to his feet, carefully steps over what was Roger so he can crouch down within arm's reach of Marie. The cut across her face is very clean, from what he can see, but the bleeding hasn't yet stopped and he is unable to really do anything about it now, although the mental admission is galling.

"Lift your head," he commands, and the girl does so without any pause in her erratic gasps. She looks straight through him with an expression so utterly lost that even without practice or experience he can read it. His fingers itch to investigate her injury more fully, to determine how deep the cut runs and if she will indeed lose her eye, but the idea of actually touching her is unsettling, his usual distance still lingering in his impulses even in this crisis.

"Give me your jacket, Spirit." The weapon offers his coat without a word of protest, even when Stein digs his fingers into the fabric and tears along the seams to produce a relatively clean strip of cloth. Marie stays where she is while he winds the cloth around her head while maintaining as much distance as he can manage. The pressure stops the bleeding, even if it doesn't do much else in the way of treatment.

"Breathe," Stein offers the girl. It will do them no good at all if she passes out; Sid's the only one strong enough to carry anyone, and it is probably best to bring the body back with them if possible. She doesn't seem to hear him - her gaze doesn't focus in at all - but there is a faint decrease in the pace of her inhalations. That is the best they will get. Stein pivots on his heels to inspect the rest of the team. Spirit looks like he's been slapped and hasn't quite regathered himself yet. Mira is still in weapon form, which is easier at least. And Sid is looking at Stein, as if he will know what to do in this situation.

"Bring Roger," Stein says to Sid, and "Bring Marie" to Spirit before he levers himself to his feet.

"Stein."

Sid's voice is like the rest of him, strong and adult and odd on a boy who is technically the same age as Spirit. Stein hasn't actually heard him speak before now; he has been as quiet as his partner, who has remained in weapon form during their entire trip.

"What is it?"

When Stein turns to look back at the other meister, Sid's face is grey and his lips are set in what looks like defensiveness. His hand is still defensively tight around the hilt of his knife, although he probably doesn't realize what he's doing.

"There was a kid out at the edge of the forest," he offers. He is looking carefully at Stein's face and not at all at the body or Marie just behind him. "With the rest of the targets. A toddler, really, just a baby."

"What was he doing with them?" Stein has no idea where Sid is going with this.

"Uh. Probably one of their kids, actually." Sid looks away from Stein's eyes. The expression on his face is like that Spirit wears when Stein has caught him doing something he ought not to. "Given the tattoo on his shoulder and all."

"Okay. Get to the point, Sid." They have some time before Marie will need treatment, but there doesn't seem to be any purpose to standing around waiting for the knife-meister to work through whatever he wants to say.

"I left him back there." As soon as he finishes the sentence Sid meets Stein's gaze again. His eyes are frightened but his jaw is set. "I don't kill kids, Stein. That's not the sort of meister I am."

"You just leave them alone in the woods instead?"

Sid's chin sets even harder. "I was going to bring him back with us."

There is a moment of utter silence punctuated only by the sound of Marie's shallow breathing while Stein considers the options.

"Fine." He turns his back on Sid and levers himself to his feet.

"Fine?" Sid's voice is loud and swings up hard at the end of the word.

"It doesn't matter to me. Do what you want." Stein turns around to take in the two boys behind him. "But Mira will have to bring him. I need you to carry the body."

There is a sob from behind him as Marie crumples, but Stein doesn't turn. Mira flickers into her physical form in a burst of blue light before darting through the trees. Stein stays where he is, facing Sid down while Spirit crawls over to Marie and wraps an arm around her with the easy physical contact that Stein has never understood.

It only takes a few minutes for Mira to return, carrying a chubby child with a shock of alarmingly blue hair. As soon as the weapon returns Sid steps forward to carefully (why carefully, Stein wonders, it's not like it matters now) lift the weight of the corpse, and when Stein turns back Spirit is coaxing Marie to her feet so they can begin the long trek back.

Stein leads the way back with the emotions of the others pounding at his back, the sickly flicker of horrified wavelengths illuminating his periphery, and the weight of failure hanging over his head. He is used to being alone for hours at a time; before the DWMA, he could go days without speaking to or seeing anyone else. He has never felt lonely before now.


	25. Reactions

Spirit has run out of words.

Ever before he has been able to babble his way out of awkwardness, out of shyness, out of fear or panic or insecurity. He does not know how to talk his way past this. He is not even sure what he is feeling, if it is understandable grief or equally understandable shock or guilty relief at not being Marie or cold horror at the realization of true danger.

He wishes Stein would say something. The meister is not, has never been, very communicative, but Spirit can usually gather enough to make do. Stein is giving no signs right now at all. Spirit might as well be walking down the street to their apartment all alone for all the information the meister is giving him. He is almost utterly silent, breathing so shallowly that Spirit can't hear his inhales, his feet barely sounding on the pavement.

The trip back from the DWMA has never been as long as it is today. It is full dark by the time they leave; Spirit supposes he should perhaps feel afraid but there's just not much space left in him for any other reaction than what he's already got. The light in their apartment seems brighter than usual, normal in a way that seems awful and wrong. Everything is different in Spirit's head; he feels like he is a step off of his surroundings, like he has accidentally lost a half-second in time and is stuttering in an environment that isn't quite in the same world that he is.

He stands just inside the door to their apartment for minutes before he thinks to take off his coat, and then he does so with absolute, precise deliberation, so his entire focus narrows to the buttons and the sleeves and the weight of the fabric on his arms. He even goes to hang it up, drifting into the darkness of his room before returning somewhat faster than he went in because the silent scrutiny of his partner and the odd light of the living room are better than the dark loneliness of his own.

Stein is sitting on the couch, watching Spirit with that careful intensity he sometimes brings out. Spirit hasn't seen it in a while; he supposes he hasn't done anything interesting enough to merit it recently, though he's not sure what exactly he's doing now that is so fascinating. The self-consciousness it brings is not particularly pleasant, like the awkward physical awareness a camera lens brings on, and the discomfort is enough to unlock the words that have abandoned him tonight.

"You look intrigued. Am I really that interesting?" He tries a self-deprecating laugh, but it sounds flat and uncertain on his tongue and Stein doesn't even blink.

"Yes." There is never much emotion in Stein's audible voice; the most Spirit ever gets is when they are resonating and there are fewer mental checks in place to their communication. This is particularly distant, even for Stein. Spirit feels a surge of unwarranted frustration, as if to make up for his meister's removal.

"I don't know why you think so." The words are clipped with anger. Spirit's not sure he's ever been really angry with Stein before, but now there is a flush of adrenaline-fueled heat rising over his chilled skin and the distance in his meister's face is utterly infuriating. "I've been useless enough today."

Stein doesn't respond, either to confirm or deny his claim. Spirit steps toward him so the meister has to look up to hold his gaze, angle his head up awkwardly from his seated position, but Stein still doesn't shift or stand or speak.

"Why won't you *do* something?" Spirit demands, and his voice cracks in the middle like it hasn't done since he was a new student. He can't explain the octave jump or the fire in his throat or the angry *something* in his veins but Stein's stoicism is the most maddening thing he's ever seen just at the moment. "Don't you have any feelings at all?"

Stein blinks then, finally conceding to some sort of reaction, and his face relaxes into some faint approximation of shock, but Spirit's mouth is well and truly running now and he can't stop it and doesn't want to.

"Don't you *care* that another student *died* today? That we couldn't help him? That we-" the words stick in Spirit's throat before he pushes past the jam, "we *abandoned* him?" Spirit wants to bleed off the tension pulling his neck and shoulders tight but it only seems to be getting worse with every word he says. "He was our *classmate*, he was talking and laughing and breathing this morning and now he's just *gone*."

"Spirit." The response is a victory, as is the edgy rise of something behind Stein's eyes, but the minor win isn't enough to stop the words that Spirit wishes were cathartic.

"You should *care*, you should be *afraid*, you should-"

"Spirit!" and Stein stands up, even though Spirit is too close for him to go anywhere so he ends up well within the weapon's personal space, so close that their noses crush into each other before Spirit leans back to concede a few inches. Stein's glasses and Stein's eyes are filling Spirit's vision, too close for him to read anything in them at all when he continues.

"Stop telling me what you *should* feel and tell me what you *do*."

Spirit gapes at him for a moment. He feels like he's going to cry and he doesn't have any idea what Stein means.

"What do *you* *feel*." Stein's voice has the edge of command to it that he sometimes gets at the end of a fight, the weight that crushes obedience out of Spirit before he entirely realizes what is happening. This is no exception. His brain is analyzing his emotions and declaring its conclusion before he can review or edit his response.

"Relief."

When he hears what he's said Spirit claps a hand over his mouth and the surge of tears inexplicably decides to crush him then. Stein collapses back onto the couch, limbs gone limp instead of the exact, inhuman tension of a moment before. He looks calm in a way he didn't a moment before; as Spirit stares at him over his hand, horror at his own words crashing over him, the meister takes off his glasses and passes his hand across his eyes for a moment.

It is unaccountably strange to see Stein so relaxed, and somewhere beyond the echo of Spirit's resounding admission he realizes that Stein is always looking at him when they are together, always watching him like he is a puzzle or a painting or a project, always *observing*. The weapon feels better when Stein drops his hand and opens his eyes again, even though he doesn't put the glasses back on. It is easier when there is an observer.

Stein stares at him for what feels like a long held breath, the usual tension in his shoulders and jaw gone so he looks his age as he so rarely does. Finally the meister shakes his head, and when he stops moving his focus has returned in part and his face is oddly mature again.

"Why relief?" he prods. It is a gentle question by Stein's standards, which is to say there is none of the brutally commanding tone so Spirit can choose to answer rather than having the words torn out of him. For once the older boy wishes he had less say in the matter. It would be easier to face this after the fact rather than during. But the meister is still watching him, and the faintest flush of long-forgotten stage fright is making Spirit jumpy, so he peels his fingers away from his mouth and fixes his gaze at the line of Stein's parted hair rather than his face and lets his mind ramble aloud.

"I'm - I'm so glad it's not me. And I'm so glad it's not you, that I'm not Marie right now." His throat closes up for a moment and he has to wait out the choking tightness before he can go on. "That's awful of me. How can I care more about myself, when I'm perfectly fine, than someone I know, someone I *knew*," he corrects himself brutally, "someone *just* *like* us who is *dead*?" His cheeks are wet with tears borne of guilt and general excess of emotion, but his words are pouring now and his throat behaves this time. "He was *right there*, he was *fine* this morning, and he *died* right in front of me and all I can feel is *relief*."

He feels like he could go on forever, but the words run out just like that. Emotions are pounding at his brain and he *wants* to continue, but he can't figure out why he's crying or what, exactly, he's feeling, only that there is too much of it for his body to contain.

In the silence that follows he is able to muster the will to pull his gaze down to Stein's face. On an emotional level he is expecting disgust or judgment; on a rational level he expects the calm, comforting distance that the meister often exudes in moments of personal crisis. The softness in Stein's eyes, the barely-repressed smile on his lips, is so entirely unexpected and foreign that it takes Spirit a long moment to classify it as affection. It's very nearly *tender*, of all things, and the shock of seeing it washes away Spirit's crushing sense of guilt so only painful relief remains.

He drops to his knees, the surprise of the moment obliterating his awareness that Stein *hates* to be touched, and then his arms are half-around the meister and his forehead is pressed against the younger boy's thigh and he is sobbing and laughing and trying to speak when he can't remember language at all.

Stein goes extraordinarily stiff under his hands. He can feel the unprecedented relaxation vanish as tension freezes the meister into stone where he sits. In the past Spirit has pulled away at this point while babbling apologies, offering his palms as proof of distance, but the contact of another person is pulling his thoughts lose from the tangle they have been, and even if it undoes all the softness in Stein's face Spirit cannot make himself move away.

There is a breathless pause and then Stein shifts very slightly. The motion is so minimal that his clothes don't even move, but it breaks the tension and Spirit knows that he's won even before Stein's fingers brush against the top of his head. The sensation of someone else's hands in his hair has always been soothing to Spirit, but this goes beyond comfort. He feels like he's drowning in isolation and the physical contact is the only thing tethering him to sanity or reality or life. It is excruciating and blissful to have sensation so dominant in his brain, sparking so strong that even his vision fades into insignificance when Stein shifts his hand. He feels like all the nerves in his hands and across his fingertips have been pulled into hyperawareness, so he is noticing things like the texture of Stein's coat and the faint warmth of the younger boy's skin through his shirt. It is as if his brain has ceased to be dominant, like his body has taken over and demands to be recognized as important and valuable and painfully, fabulously alive.

Spirit is angled awkwardly over and around Stein, one leg folded under him and the other pulled up so it is digging into the sharp edge of the couch just before the cushion begins. He can feel the numbness of discomfort creeping into his foot and considers moving, but Stein is actually dragging his long fingers through the tangles of Spirit's hair and against his scalp instead of just brushing his hand feather-light over the weapon's head as he usually does, and nothing will induce Spirit to move until Stein actually pushes him off. The physical pleasure combined with his desire to escape his own thoughts are numbing his emotional distress, setting it aside for the unknown future, so his tears dry salty on his skin and when Stein digs his fingers into the back of Spirit's neck he whimpers in pleasure instead of his earlier distress. He thinks he hears Stein sigh low in his throat, but the sound is very faint and he is far too distracted to spend any time thinking about it. The guilt and the trauma of the day are still there, waiting to descend as soon as he considers the past or the future, but as long as he lets his brain go fuzzy with the raw sensual pleasure of the moment and the comfort of another living being, he can ignore them for a little while.

So he does.


	26. Observation

Spirit stays home from class for three days. Stein doesn't ask for an explanation, and his partner doesn't offer one; he is just present when he's usually not, a mild and pleasant distraction while Stein is maneuvering through the apartment during his usual day. And then one morning Stein's attention is pulled away from his reading by the sound of Spirit's movements, earlier than the weapon ever gets up on his own, and the soft *click* of the front door indicates the return to their normal routine.

A normal routine for Spirit, anyway. Stein's habits lack the regularity to be called a routine, and he has been forming a plan over the few days of unusual company; daytime solitude and the confidence of preparation now give him the opportunity to put it in motion. He waits until the flood of punctually compliant students will have diminished to a trickle of irresponsible late-risers, and then he sets aside his books and his notes and makes his way to the DWMA.

He has been to the infirmary before, usually after particularly difficult assignments that leave he or Spirit or both in need of a few stitches or other treatment, so it is easy to find his way there now. It is nearly empty when he enters; only one of the handful of beds is occupied, as he expected, and the school nurse is labelling bottles at the desk near the door. The nurse looks up as Stein comes in and his eyes flicker with recognition.

"Hey there Stein," he offers, setting down his pen. "I haven't seen you recently. How are you and Spirit doing?"

"We're fine," Stein responds. He doesn't particularly enjoy small talk, but it's easy enough to keep up one end while thinking about something totally unrelated. "The last few assignments were fine for us. Actually, I wanted to see how Marie is doing."

The name is awkward on his tongue. He has practiced saying the weapon's name, repeating the unfamiliar syllables over and over until they fall with the ease of long use, but sounding broken-in is very different than feeling so in his head. His discomfort is limited to his own thoughts, though, because the nurse blinks at him and smiles.

"I didn't know you two knew each other," and since this is Stein's goal he doesn't correct the other man. "She's been quiet for the last few days. Hasn't had visitors yet; the other students are busy and," here his voice drops to a whisper Stein can barely hear, "it's always hard to know what to say in this sort of situation." The nurse's volume jumps back to a normal level as he continues. "It's good of you to take time off class to come and see her. I think she'll be happy to see you."

"Thanks," Stein says with forced casualness. The other man turns back to his labelling and Stein moves past a half-drawn white curtain into the main space of the infirmary. There are just a handful of beds, each one made up with clinically white sheets and military precision, none occupied except for the one farthest from the door and closest to the window. The injured weapon is turned sideways with her back to Stein, so he is almost level with the row of beds before she hears his footsteps and turns.

"Oh." She pushes herself up so she's sitting normally, tries to tuck her mass of golden hair behind her ears - its own weight promptly pulls it back around her face - and tugs her shirt straight. "Hi. You're Spirit's partner, right? Franken?"

"Stein." He corrects. Stein sits on the adjourning bed so he can face her, reaches up to adjust his glasses needlessly so he can blink into Soul Perception. "How's it going?"

The girl's forehead creases. Her mouth opens, shuts, opens again while the tension in her forehead increases. Stein takes her hesitation to observe her soul wavelength.

The meister has used Soul Perception on all sorts of things. He tried on animals once or twice but never saw more than the flicker of uncontrolled instinct. Trained meisters are relatively impressive, as such things go; weapons are interesting too, usually stronger than meisters but critically weak in some way that their partner compensates for. This weapon's wavelength is so subdued that she looks almost like a normal human; Stein can't read much of her emotional state at all, beyond the grief that is collapsing her wavelength. He failed to count on this; it will make his investigation more difficult, but he is unwilling to admit defeat yet. Still, there's not much point in watching a wavelength that won't tell him anything, so he clears his vision and settles for gathering what little he can from the facial expression underneath the barely-healed bruises hiding her face.

"I'm fine," is what she finally says in response to his query, which is such a blatant lie that even he can see through it.

Stein tips his head to the side, composes his features in what he hopes looks something like sympathy. "It will be better if you talk about it, you know."

Her lips tighten and she looks away from him, out towards the glare of the window. "You *know* what happened. You were there."

"I know the *events*," he corrects. "But your experience was significantly different than mine. Have you talked about it with anyone at all yet?"

The perfect silence and unbroken stillness from his listener is enough information for him to continue.

"You should." He is trying to make his voice softer; it definitely drops in volume but he's not sure it's conveying what he wants, and it's a relief she's not looking at his face because he has no idea what sort of expression he should have in this situation. "It will help. I promise."

There is no way he can keep this promise and no real reason she should trust him, but the weapon's shoulders shift and she glances at him before she responds. "You're the first visitor I've had." Her voice is cracked with repressed tears and Stein knows he has her, that she'll tell him anything he asks now. "No one can stand to look at me or to talk to me, it's -" She cuts herself off, turns her head away so her hair is curtaining her face. It is long minutes before she speaks again in a voice tight with barely-imposed control.

"I didn't know that I could feel this alone." Stein can't see her face; with her hair blocking his vision she could be perfectly healthy, except for the dark line of an eyepatch cutting through the gold. "Having a partner - meeting Roger was like meeting part of myself. He was me and I was him and I didn't - I had never felt so *right*." Her voice cracks and she takes a long, shaky breath before going on.

"I don't know what it's like for you. Maybe everyone feels that way with their partners. It is - it *was* -" Her self-imposed correction is brutal. "- *was* wonderful."

"And now?" Stein pushes, because he knows all this, knows what it is like to have a partner, and that is not what he is here for.

"Now I -" The weapon lifts her head so her face is turned up towards the sunlight of the window, so the dark reds and purples of broken veins are highlighted by the day. She shakes her head and when she speaks again the tension in her voice is gone and there is only the heaviness of resignation. "I think I'm going to be broken forever. It's not just that Roger is -" Her voice gives out as her visible eye overflows with tears, but she swallows hard and goes on anyway. "It's not just that I'm alone, it's like I'm *incomplete.* And I don't think I can get that missing piece back again." There is the slightest laugh, more of a half-exhale than anything else, and it doesn't touch her face at all. "Besides, I'm not much good as a weapon without anyone to wield me."

"What if you had another partner?" Stein asks. It seems like the logical solution to the problem, but the girl turns her gaze on him as all the muscles in her jaw tighten and he can tell that something has gone wrong.

"I don't *want* another partner." She is almost spitting the words, they are coming so fast and so hard. "I want *my* meister. How would *you* like to swap out weapons?"

Stein came here to collect information. He wants to know what it is like to be a weapon, what it is like to lose a meister, what it would be like for Spirit if he were injured or killed. His curiosity has all been clinical and distant; he never considered the possibility of losing *his* partner. For a brief moment his mind offers up what could have been, what still might be at some point, and when he looks at the weapon in front of him he can see the reality of his hypothetical reaction all over her face and he understands exactly what she is feeling. It reminds him of Resonance, the way that the boundaries between himself and Spirit blur, and it is terrifying. He pulls back mentally from the thought and physically from Marie, jerking backwards so he can feel like he is himself again.

Her face relaxes and she is back into the wide-eyed softness of earlier. "Exactly," she says, as if his reaction made any sense at all. "It's awful. I *need* a meister to become a death weapon but I don't want anyone but Roger."

Her voice trails down to a whisper on the last syllables, and she brings her hands up to cover her face while her shoulders shake with emotion that is now thankfully distant again. Stein knows that this is the right time to offer the physical contact that is so overwhelming for him and so comforting for others, but he can't stand the thought of reopening the connection that he has only just managed to sever, so instead he clasps his hands in his lap and watches Marie's reaction with all the removal he can call up.

By the time the girl's trembling sobs fade into exhausted silence, Stein has reasserted control over his emotions and is ready to offer another sally on Marie's experiences.

"How are you doing physically?" He feels like the change of subject is awkward and obviously forced, but the weapon looks up with a tired smile and answers.

"Not good, obviously." She raises a hand towards her face before letting it fall back into her lap. "They've got me dosed up on all sorts of painkillers but everything I can feel hurts. It must look pretty terrible too." Her eyes relax into softness as she goes on. "You're the only person who's seen me since I got patched up and didn't look like he was going to be sick. Even the nurse is appalled. I'm glad there's no mirrors I can see from here, that's all."

"It's not that bad," Stein lies. "The bruises will fade eventually. And you can still see."

Marie's face falls. "Just the one eye, though. Goodbye depth perception, I guess."

Stein shrugs in affected nonchalance. "They did a good job of patching you up. I thought it would be a lot worse."

He still can't get enough emotion into his words - he can hear the lack but isn't sure how to remedy it - but the girl is smiling at him, the curve of her mouth reaching up to her uncovered eye, so the words alone must be doing the trick.

"Actually." He pauses just long enough to give the impression that he is nervous, looks away from the weapon's face in deliberate imitation of Spirit's everpresent shyness. "I know this is kind of weird, but -" Inhale, hold for a moment, exhale gustily. Look up at the weapon with the best approximation of self-consciousness he can muster. "Can I - see it?"

The girl looks at him for a moment with her expression blank of understanding or reaction. He can actually see the comprehension splash over her face, sparkling in her uncovered eye and triggering an unconscious smile before it vanishes.

"Sure." She is much less upset by his request that he had expected. If anything, the memory of her brief smile is still lingering at the corner of her mouth when she reaches up to untie the bow at the back of her head. "It's probably pretty bad, but since I haven't seen it yet I don't know how gruesome it is. Try not to scream."

This last is said with a smile, but there is tension around her eyes that indicates something more than teasing. She only hesitates for a moment before she pulls the patch away and turns her head so he can see the injury.

Her face is patterned red and blue with the bruising damage she took during her last fight, but the oval of her face that was covered by the patch is much worse than Stein expected it could be, almost black and swollen with misplaced blood that hasn't yet been handled by the body. There is a row of stitches running straight down from her eyebrow to the top of her broken cheekbone, the perfectly straight cut and neat sutures contrasting dramatically with the haphazard mess of everything around them. The broken skin itself is angry red and looks so raw that Stein half-expects it to still be bleeding, but the edges of the injury are held carefully together by the thread. When he blinks, he imagines he can see the time-lapse recovery of Marie's skin and bone, her cheekbone knitting itself back into a single whole, the red blood under her skin reabsorbing as it fades through blue and purple and green and yellow back to health, the torn skin of her face reaching out to the other side until it has reconnected with itself. He knows exactly how she will look when she has healed, with only the raised edge of a scar to testify to the amazing resilience of her body. He wonders if her mind will prove to have the same elasticity. He suspects so, although his psychology textbooks stress the importance of treating patients as individuals. It will be an interesting observation.

Marie is watching his face, eyes wide and face tight. He has leaned in towards her, he realizes, trying to get a better view without touching her, and she hasn't angled back, so he is much closer to her face now than he was. It takes an effort to pull back and look away into the blinding light of the sunshine.

"They did a good job," he offers. "You'll be fine." He lets his general confidence in his own opinions saturate the words, and Marie smiles in response.

"Thanks." She looks away while she ties the eyepatch back over the worst of her injury. "You really are totally unfazed, aren't you?" She doesn't wait for a response before continuing. "That helps. A lot." She glances back over at him for a moment before looking down at her hands. Stein recognizes the expression from Spirit, although he can't tell if she's blushing like his weapon does behind the disguise of her bruises.

"I'm glad you came," she tells her hands.

That requires some sort of response. "Thanks for talking to me." He gets the sense, again, that he should be doing something, offering a hug or touching the weapon's shoulder, but he stays where he is. "Do you mind if I come back?" He knows she won't, but the asking is part of the process so he offers it anyway.

Her face glows with pleasure. "No, not at all. It'd be great to have someone to talk to."

"Okay." He tries on a smile as he stands and shoves his hands into his pockets in what he hopes looks like awkwardness instead of the distaste it is. "I'll see you soon."

The weapon watches him go. He can feel the tension of being observed lingering in his shoulderblades until he has made his way to the doorway, offered a token nod to the nurse, and the door clicks shut behind him. In the middle of the day as it is the hallway around him is empty. Stein leans against the wall and lets his eyes shut, waiting until his mind calms to its normal low buzz before he makes his way down the hall to wait outside Spirit's classroom for the remaining hours before his partner emerges.


	27. Introduction

All Spirit wants is to pretend that everything is perfectly normal. He has been avoiding the world and reality for days, hiding in his apartment with Stein and ignoring all the activity and responsibilities waiting just outside the door, and as of this morning he finally felt mentally sturdy enough to shoulder them again. As of this afternoon he is beginning to doubt his own conviction. The usual low-level stress of interacting with other students and attending class seemed manageable, but this is much worse than he expected. It is as if he is surrounded in a bubble of silence and half-hidden stares and whispers that pop up just over his shoulder. He doesn't blame the other students; they aren't trying to be mean, just thoughtful, but their awkward distance and uncontrollable curiosity are making him very seriously reconsider his return.

Marie is nowhere to be seen, and that at least is exactly as he expects. Upon reflection he actually has no idea at all where she *would* be. Going back to an empty apartment is so awful even in his own mind that he shies away from the very idea; she might still be in the infirmary, but he has no actual conception of how bad her injuries were. At any rate, she's not currently out and about with the rest of their peers, and while he is glad he can take some of the pressure off her eventual return by being seen first, at the moment it is a highly unpleasant strain on him. Sid and Mira are still absent as well; Spirit hasn't seen anyone other than Stein since the assignment, and in the quiet that follows him it is impossible to collect any information about the whereabouts or status of those who experienced it with him.

By the time he is sitting in the last class of the day, Spirit feels like his shoulders are permanently hunched just under his ears and wants nothing so much as he wants to be at home. Having returned today he is not sure he can escape coming back tomorrow, but the possibilities of the future seem unbearable and oppressive and it is all he can do to wait out the last few hours until Stein meets him and takes him back to the safety of their apartment.

He is so intent on turning off his brain until class is over that he doesn't notice the student climbing over the back row of his bench until she drops into the spot next to him. The movement in his periphery is startling and brings his gaze around in spite of his best intentions to ignore everything until class is over.

The girl is one of his classmates; he's not seen her often, but the classroom is large and he doesn't usually notice anyone who sits in the rows behind him. She is smiling at him, looking genuinely pleased to have his attention except for her eyes, which are bright with tension and adrenaline.

"Hey," she offers before he has to think of anything to say, and extends a hand. "I'm Kami."

Spirit takes the proffered handshake automatically, instinct and training wrapping his fingers around her palm with just the right amount of force to be firm but not painful. The contact is over before he has really processed what has happened and before he has any time to get nervous about the casual physical contact that has become so rare in his life.

The girl - Kami - is still smiling, but the tension in her eyes is bleeding into the edges of her mouth so the expression is becoming forced. Spirit realizes he hasn't said anything and tries to correct the situation.

"Spirit. Albarn."

"I know." Some of the tightness fades from her face. "I usually sit just a couple rows behind you. You're easy to spot with that hair."

She reaches up to flick a strand of red hair away from his face. Spirit isn't sure if he is pleased or frightened by her casual invasion of his space, but she definitely has him off-balance.

"I'm sorry I don't recognize you," he tries in an attempt to regain his control over the conversation. "I don't look around a whole lot."

"Yeah, I know." Her smile is a grin now; she is biting her lips to try to keep it in check but it's not doing a whole lot of good. "You don't pay a whole lot of attention to class either. But at least you're here, I guess. Not your meister's thing?"

Spirit is much more comfortable talking about Stein than he is talking about himself. He smiles without realizing it, relaxes back against the bench. "Not at all. *School* is not really Stein's thing, to be honest."

"They say he's a genius," Kami offers. Her grin is gone but there is interest in her green eyes.

"He might be," Spirit answers honestly. "I'm not sure what genius would look like but if anyone has it it's him. He's amazing."

Kami blinks at him. There is something in her face that makes Spirit think she is approaching a topic that she doesn't entirely like, and then she speaks and he knows he is right.

"I'm sorry about what happened on your last assignment."

Spirit braces himself for panic or tears or anger, but this girl is staring right at him with sympathy all over her face, and there is no pity in her expression at all, and the difference between her straightforward approach of the topic and the awful whispering behind his back is so stark that he actually laughs, amusement that he wasn't prepared for bubbling up his throat before he is able to cut it off. Kami draws back and he tries to stammer out some kind of an explanation before he frightens her away entirely.

"Don't - I'm sorry, it's just - no one has been - everyone's been *avoiding* me all day and you're just -" His hand is reaching for her shoulder before he can stop it, before he can pull back from the physical contact that Stein hates so much, but she doesn't flinch away or lean back from him so he actually rests his fingers against her sleeve in an expression of gratitude that his mumbled "Thank you," can't adequately convey.

"Hey, don't worry about it." She turns her face away and rubs her fingers over her cheek so he can't see her expression at all for a moment; when she looks back, her eyes are bright even though her sympathetic smile is tight at the edges. "It must have been really bad for you."

Spirit can't answer. His hysterical laughter has tipped over into tears with no warning at all and he's fairly certain that if he opens his mouth he will start sobbing, and he's not sure whether crying in front of this girl or in the middle of class would be the more embarrassing scenario. It really wasn't a question, anyway. Kami is staring so intently at him that he has to look away, aim his eyes at the clean blackboard even though he's not seeing anything at all, and focus on carefully breathing around the knot in his throat.

"Sorry," he finally hears her say. She doesn't touch him again and he is relieved; at this point Spirit is fairly certain that any sort of physical contact will shatter the fragile shell of control he is still maintaining. There is the faint sound of a self-deprecating laugh and under her breath, "All this waiting for the right moment and I fuck it up as soon as I get a chance."

Spirit tries to shake his head, but he still can't speak and Kami is talking over any response he might make anyway. "Let's talk about something more boring, yeah? Mundane and dull and easy, how does that sound?" He manages a damp chuckle although he is still blinking hard at the front of the room, and she takes it as the acquiescence it is and continues. "Awful weather we've been having, don't you think? I swear, I haven't wanted to leave the house for weeks."

That startles a sideways glance out of the weapon. "It's been sunny, hasn't it?"

Kami is turned fully sideways on the bench, her legs crossed in front of her so she can lean forward onto them and peer up at him. She grins into his face. "See? Conversation is easy. I like the rain. Much better than heat in my humble opinion. And I burn like you wouldn't believe if I even think about going out in this sort of thing. Have to bundle up more for summer than for the winter."

She has him *laughing*, smiling so easily that he doesn't even realize the wave of grief is gone until the professor comes in and Kami turns away to sit normally on the bench next to him and train her attention on the lecture. She does a frustratingly admirable job of being studious; it is as if Spirit has entirely ceased to exist while class is in session. By the time the bell chimes, Spirit has convinced himself that this has all been a very elaborate and unintelligible joke at his expense and is fully prepared to leave as rapidly as he can to save himself further inexplicable mockery. Kami beats him to it, though, swinging to her feet so fast he is only barely sitting up by the time she is pulling her bag over her shoulder.

"Let me walk you out," she offers. It's not really a request and Spirit wouldn't refuse if it was. She perches on the edge of the desk while he shoves the books he never uses into his own bag.

"Where's your partner?" he finally asks when the tension of being observed has grown unbearable and he is feeling impossibly self-conscious.

Kami shrugs. "I'm sure I can track her down. We do live together, after all. Yours meets you just after class, right?"

"Usually."

"I'd best hand you off then." She smirks at him. "Don't want you getting lost."

Spirit isn't sure if she's flirting with him or teasing him or both, and he's not sure which he would prefer but he is sure that he likes this easy chatter. It's hard to remember how normal conversation should go but it's simple to let his brain go on autopilot and navigate the complexities of regular human interaction without the guesswork and backtracking that living with Stein requires. Even the nervousness that Kami's continuing smile is bringing on is comfortingly ordinary; it's nice to just fill the air with idle chatter about something stupid like the sunshine or their classmates without the additional layer of complexity that overlays everything Stein says or does.

The meister is waiting when they leave the classroom, both of them walking slow so they are some of the last students out. He sees Spirit a moment before Kami, stands up from his recline against the wall and starts to move forward. Spirit can see the exact second his partner really sees the girl at his side. Stein's face goes distant, his eyes unfocus and his jaw tightens, and Spirit has never seen him look so aloof or so intimidating as he does right now. He slows to a stop, so instead of falling into step alongside Spirit the two of them draw up to the meister and stop like they've hit a wall.

Stein won't look at Spirit; he is staring at Kami with something that is awfully close to aggression, and when Spirit looks back at his classmate she is returning the look with more fire in her eyes than Spirit thought she would have. He has missed something crucial but has no idea why there should be so much tension between them. Finally Kami smiles, leans back; she almost offers her hand but then twists the motion into a wave instead.

"Hi there. I'm Kami; just thought I'd finally break the ice with Spirit today." Her smile is having no effect on Stein at all, but neither does she appear to be at all fazed by the tightness around his eyes. "It's good to meet you officially instead of just admiring from a distance," she tries, but the compliment falls just as flat as her friendliness. She gives up, angles her body so she is half-facing Spirit instead while her eyes still watch Stein warily. "You should both come out to coffee with my weapon and I sometime. I know she'd like to meet the famous Stein and I think she'd get along famously with you, Spirit."

It is abundantly clear that Stein isn't going to respond, so Spirit answers for both of them. "That sounds like fun, we should!"

"Okay." Kami glances at him, grins, then steps away and is leaving before Spirit can come up with any sort of adequate farewell. "See ya!"

"Bye," he offers before turning back to Stein. The stiffness is leeching out of his meister as rapidly as it came but Spirit is still more than a little irritated.

"What was that?" he demands in a violent whisper in the interest of maintaining some privacy. "I know you're not a fan of socializing, but she was nice!"

Stein glances at him and his expression is utterly *agonized* in the breath before he turns away and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with an obscuring hand. When he speaks his voice is so perfectly calm that Spirit is not sure he wasn't actively hallucinating the meister's reaction.

"It's been a long day." That's very nearly an apology, and it takes all the wind out of Spirit's righteous ire. The weapon rolls his eyes at his meister's back, then jogs forward so they are walking side by side.

The sporting thing is to leave the apology quietly accepted rather than actively acknowledged, so to that end Spirit tries to change the subject. "Yeah, for me too. This last class was actually the only part of it worth mentioning. Did you do anything interesting while I was gone?"

Sometimes Stein will be in a chatty mood and talk incomprehensibly about his most recent interest; sometimes he feels like lecturing and will actually attempt to teach Spirit a little about whatever topic he is thinking about this week. Today he inhales as if he is going to speak, pauses, and then shrugs.

"Not really."

The rest of the walk back is spent in a tight silence that Spirit can't explain and doesn't know how to break.


	28. Reflection

This was not supposed to happen.

The walk back to Spirit and Stein's apartment is brutally silent but Stein can't hear it for the ringing in his ears and the buzzing in his thoughts. He is usually perfectly attuned to Spirit, so even when the weapon is unaware of his own mental state Stein knows, Stein knows what he is feeling or at least what he needs far better than the older boy can possibly know himself. Stein has spent *years* honing this skill, learning Spirit as thoroughly as he can from the still-slightly-removed distance of another person, until the body-bleed of their last Resonance felt more right than the ordinary of his own form. And while he has been so carefully studying his weapon he has entirely ignored the perfectly obvious change occurring in his own head.

He can't even pinpoint when it happened. That is utterly infuriating, frustrating in a way that he would normally pull back from, but he is too lost in unfamiliar and uncomfortably *close* emotions to recognize the dangerous edge he is toppling over. There is *no way* that he has always felt this way - there had to be a turning point, when his connection to his partner turned into something more. But his memories are betraying him, casting themselves in warm nostalgia instead of the honest distance of objectivity, and he has no idea how long he has been studiously ignoring the (now perfectly obvious) signs of his own feelings. He's not even sure how long he's *had* these feelings; they're certainly never something that have manifested before. Stein convinced himself years ago that his calculated distance from people and emotions was something different in his psyche, either a connection shattered by his latent madness or (in his egotistical moments) a sign of his superiority, a tool that allowed him to retain objectivity when others would be brought low by the complexities of their bonds to others.

It felt like nothing so much as betrayal, betrayal by his own mind and body, when he saw Kami looking up at Spirit with desire in her eyes and heat humming in her wavelength and his mind calmly offered up the relevant information that *he* wanted Spirit too, had for some undetermined amount of time. The resultant crush of jealousy had so dominated his mind that even the surge of horrified awareness had been swept aside. Stein can't recall any part of the conversation, anything other than Kami smiling at Spirit and Kami casually touching the weapon, *his* weapon, and the fire burning through him like bitter rage. It wasn't until Spirit hissed at him in the closest thing to actual anger that Stein has ever seen from the other boy that the full realization hit him, and jealous fury boiled into excruciating desire all at once and hasn't cooled yet, in spite of all the mental imprecations Stein is throwing at himself.

He doesn't know how to handle this. The very possibility of being so undone by what he knows are just flickers of electricity in his brain has never occurred him before. He was so sure he was immune, so sure that the years of quiescence indicated a miswiring instead of just a delay, that he entirely missed the now-obvious signs that litter his recollections and his bloodstream. He is not sure whether he should retreat or advance and has no idea what he would do with himself in either situation. Is this what everyone else feels *all the time*?

He is leaving Spirit behind, walking too fast for the weapon to keep up, and for the first time in years Stein is glad to be really and truly alone. It has been a long time since he stopped considering Spirit as someone else and started grouping the other boy in his sense of interiority, but the historical habit is entirely swept aside in this new, excruciating self-awareness. He can hear the increase in the pace of Spirit's footsteps as the other boy adjusts to match his speed, but the gap between them remains and Stein is briefly grateful to Spirit's emotional sensitivity before he loses himself in his thoughts again.

Stein almost doesn't turn when they reach their apartment building. The temptation to carry on with only loneliness for company is very strong, but the new blaze of emotions includes an unpleasant sense of guilt that overrides Stein's own desires. Nothing has ever done that before, and he's not at all sure he likes the secondary considerations of other people's feelings invading his own head, but he leads the way inside anyway. Spirit stays a few steps behind until they are actually at their own door, and even then he hesitates before closing the distance and following Stein into the room. The meister doesn't look at the other boy, can't force himself to; instead he steps around to sit on the couch and stare half-blindly out over the rooftops of the city.

Even with his back turned, even without Soul Perception, Stein can *feel* the hesitation in Spirit's movements, can almost hear the not-quite-spoken question on his exhale, can taste the worry and stress pouring off him as if it is hanging in the air. Finally he moves away, and the click of his door closing relaxes the pained tension in Stein's shoulders so he can take a deep breath again.

He has never been as thoroughly lost as he is now. Personal desire is an excellent driving force and thus far it has been straightforward and simple to follow where it steered him. He never considered that he might want to take someone else into his calculations, although now that he reflects he can see Spirit's creeping influence on recent decisions. His memory can't be trusted, his *mind* can't be trusted, and in his panic he can hear the low purring promise of madness at the top of his spine, hissing in anticipation as rationality retreats from the field.

He needs more information. He needs more *data*, and all his internal reflection is doing is corrupting what objective details he still has. He shoves off the couch hard and nearly runs down the hall, forcing himself past Spirit's shut door before he can even think about pausing because if he stops he will never be able to leave again; the tiny sounds that prove Spirit's existence will lock him in place for all eternity.

The bathroom light is very harsh, a blistering white that casts too-dark shadows over the faces under it. Stein has always liked it; it seems *clean*. It is exactly as honest with his expression now as it has been in better days, better times. The meister doesn't generally observe his own face - he hasn't needed to before today, not when he could read his own feelings as if they were written on a sheet before him. But now he leans over the sink and grips the porcelain until his fingers cramp, staring into the sudden depths of his eyes and the tension in his face as if he is looking at an utter stranger.

It is true as far as it goes. He doesn't recognize himself the way he looks now; it is as if someone has stolen his appearance and is using his face like a mask to express their apparently violent emotions. His eyes are dark with moisture and soft and frightened at the edges. His mouth is set in a hard line but as he watches his lip trembles uncontrollably. The muscles of his jaw are tight with tension, his skin is almost grey from lack of bloodflow, and the progressing shadows under his eyes look theatrical in the excess of illumination.

He can't read the pieces, not when he is this close. He needs *distance*, distance from his appearance, distance from his mind, distance from himself. Stein pulls off his glasses, shuts his eyes and *wills* the internal chatter away, shoves it from his mind as hard as he can. There is an impression of acute pain, of intense sorrow and a raging fury, and then they fade into the distance. The purr has deepened to a roar, but that is an old friend; that Stein knows how to deal with. He lets it stay while he open his eyes to observe himself again.

The eyes in the mirror are sad. The mouth is angry and hurting, the jaw is afraid, the brow is *terrified*. The subject is tired, tired deep down, straight through skin and muscles and bone all the way down to the blood. There is a cocktail of emotions in front of him, but they are all coming from the fear and the sadness; the rest are flitting over the top, bubbling up as a result of the underlying framework but not relevant.

There is something else, though, under even the terror and the tears that are starting to gather at the corners of the green eyes. Stein leans closer to the mirror until all he can see is green, waits until the tears overflow and there is a moment of clarity when he can see all the way into the core of things.

There is nothing there but *want*. Desire is almost too tame a word for the emotion roaring beneath all the others. It is violent and hot and agonizing and there is an infinity of panic trying very hard to cover it up but that it what it is.

As close as he is, Stein can see the tension drain out of the reflection. The eyes relax, the jaw loosens, the face angles away from the mirror until it is at a reasonable distance. The mouth opens and shuts again, this time without the line of tension. A hand comes up to touch the moisture on a cheek, and when Stein brings his hand away he is startled to find his fingers damp. The expression in the mirror is totally calm now, the eyes distant and cool and as unreadable as a blank wall.

Stein splashes water on his face to rinse away the salt that is trailing over his cheekbones, carefully dries the lingering dampness, settles his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. The roaring in his ears is worse, now, like a bad case of tinnitus or the sound of thunder a few miles away, but the reflection that he knows is his is relaxed and unreadable and shatteringly calm, and that is all he needs.

He flicks off the lightswitch and steps out into the darkness of the hallway.


	29. Adrenaline

Spirit has been so stressed all day that he can barely sit still, can barely breathe for the fluttering nerves and worry in his stomach. Stein was nowhere to be seen when he got up, which is in itself not abnormal, but in conjunction with the meister's frigid silence of the night before the absence felt like an actual blow to Spirit's psyche. Combine that with his worry that Kami will be absent as well and the weapon has been on the verge of full-on panic all day. The only benefit to this is that his mental state is such that the edgy space around him barely registers, so he is at least dodging the awkwardness of the day before.

He spends the whole day vacillating between fear of the last class of the day and anticipation, and somewhere between the two the time manages to pass until he is actually outside the door and feeling like the world is about to crash apart in front of him. Someone pushes past him and he sees the trailing edge of Azusa Yumi's eye-roll at his lack of consideration, but then she opens the door and Spirit sees Kami in the row he usually sits in and he could kiss the other weapon. Now he can't get in the door fast enough, almost trips over his own feet as he climbs the steps and slides sideways down the bench towards the blond girl.

She grins at him. "Hey there."

"Hey," Spirit manages to get out before his throat seizes up on nervousness.

"How you doing?" she asks politely.

He tries to speak, has to look away, and then the constriction is gone and he is blurting instead. "I wasn't sure you'd still want to talk to me." When he glances back, Kami's face is twisted in confusion.

"Why?" She draws the word out into two syllables, raises an eyebrow so Spirit feels utterly and painfully foolish. He shrugs as if the motion will explain for him.

"Stein wasn't particularly sociable yesterday." That's not nearly enough to apologize for the awful interaction yesterday, but there is a flare of guilty defensiveness that prevents Spirit from offering an apology for his meister being the way he is.

Kami rolls her eyes, looking eerily similar to Azusa for a moment. "And you're not him. You don't need to apologize for your meister's unfriendliness."

Spirit is torn between relief and rising guilt. It doesn't seem quite right for Kami to brush off Stein's behavior as unfriendliness - Spirit has *seen* unfriendliness before, and yesterday was something more than that - but he doesn't want to argue the point and he *is* relieved that Kami is still sitting next to him, smiling at him with her eyes sparkling with teasing, so he lets it go.

"Still want to go out for coffee then?" He is trying to sound light and easy but his voice cracks in the middle of his sentence and even he can hear the fear of rejection in his tone. Luckily, Kami doesn't give him long to soak in his own nerves; she talks almost over his last syllables.

"Absolutely. Are you free after class?"

"Uh. Yes. Definitely." Spirit isn't sure that Stein will approve of this but adrenaline is skipping through him with a sort of present-tense-only thought process, and the details of the future can be worked out or suffered through by future-Spirit.

"Excellent." Kami smiles and her whole face lights up and for a moment she is the most beautiful thing Spirit has ever seen.

There is not much to remember about class. Spirit is watching Kami out of the corner of his eye and trying to pretend that he isn't, which takes a lot more effort than just watching her directly does, and she is doing an excellent impression of not knowing he exists. But when the bell goes she is again faster than he at condensing her books and paper, pausing to offer, "We'll meet you outside," before she goes springing up the tabletops of the rows behind them as if they are intended for use as stairs.

As soon as Spirit looks away, the trickle of guilt that has been creeping in all class hits him and panic follows in its wake. He has to leave, but at this moment staying right where he is and avoiding the inevitable confrontation with Stein seems preferable to doing anything else. It takes a handful of deep breaths before he can force himself to his feet, and another before he is actually heading for the door with his mind blank of what he will say to tell Stein that they're going out with a girl that the meister apparently hates.

Given Spirit's emotional turmoil, it's a little anticlimatic when Stein is outside class like he always is, hands in his pockets while he watches the other students going by as if at a distance. He looks perfectly calm; there is none of the anger bleeding off him that was there yesterday. He turns to look at Spirit as the weapon approaches, and as soon as Stein's eyes land on his Spirit is babbling out information too fast to understand, trying desperately to convey the relevant facts before Stein has another unexplained meltdown.

"Coffee! Kami's gone to get her partner. Right now, we'll just walk there together I guess. Do you mind? I know it's probably not your thing. You don't have to go but I'd like to have you there. Sorry it's so last minute, I didn't see you this morning. Didn't actually know this morning either, but it sounds like fun and it's Friday, so. Kami's really nice and I'd like to go. Will you come?"

The rapidity of Spirit's speech slows as he processes Stein's expression. It's not that it's angry, not that there's any emotion at all, actually. It's just that usually Stein watches him with a mildly amused distance, and today - it's like there's nothing in his eyes at all. Or perhaps more accurately like there's a wall turning the green of his eyes puddle-shallow instead of the depth that is usually there.

"That's fine," he says when Spirit stops talking. Spirit stares at him for a moment, trying to decide if the distance is in his head or actually something to worry about, but then a hand grabs his arm and he turns and Kami's there, towing a skinny brunette who seems too frightened to speak, and then somehow they're all moving forward on Kami's momentum alone. Kami doesn't let go of Spirit's arm so that by the time they leave the DWMA she has her arm looped through his like they are old-fashioned lovers. Stein and Kami's partner - Spirit didn't even catch her name - are walking on the far outside, Kami's partner close on the other side of her meister and Stein hovering just over Spirit's shoulder where the weapon can't quite see him. Every time Spirit twists around to check Stein is watching him, just him, so focused that Kami and her partner might not even exist, but he never has enough time to see if the wall behind Stein's eyes has faded before Kami is laughing something and he is turning back to respond.

The coffee shop is packed full of students, but Kami sends her partner off to secure a corner in the back while she, Spirit, and Stein wait through the line to order. As soon as the other girl (her name, as it turns out, is Ashe) has left, Spirit becomes abruptly and acutely aware that he now has the full attention of two different people. Kami is talking at him, smiling and chatting and still holding his arm, and she is so engaging that he keeps responding even though he knows he is leaving Stein at loose ends, but his peripheral attention is strung tight with nerves and awkward awareness and every time Kami brushes his hair with her fingers or squeezes the bare skin of his wrist Spirit becomes excruciatingly aware of Stein's gaze at his back. Caught between the two of them, it is a relief when they retreat to the too-small table Ashe is protectively spread across.

There are too many people for a reasonable conversation; everything has to be half-shouted to be heard over the dull roar of dozens of voices. It is an entirely different atmosphere than the near-silent intimacy of Spirit's last visit here with Stein, but Kami is as unfazed by this as she appears to be by everything. They are seated in a circle, partners together, but Stein and Ashe are both scooted away from each other so there is a larger gap between them and Kami and Spirit are pressed up against each other so neither can move without brushing the other. Kami's energy is rising; she is now smiling continually, lips half-parted in anticipation of laughter, and when it comes she angles her head back so her hair falls straight down her back in a perfect shining line. Spirit can't look away when she does that, and when she tips her chin back down glancing at either he or Stein, looking at her hands or at Kami, although she is quietly smiling so she's probably having a good time. And Stein is cradling his mug of coffee between his palms, holding it to his mouth even when he's not drinking so it obscures his face, staring at Spirit so fixedly that the weapon has to look away every time he makes eye contact with his meister.

Spirit thinks he does an excellent job of keeping up his end of the conversation, trapped between two sets of green eyes as he is, but when Kami stretches and suggests leaving he can't recall anything that has been said, can't actually recall anything other than the pleasant tingle that is suffusing his blood and the pained tension taut in his muscles. They have to shuffle out in a jerky line as they leave, maneuvering past the crush of people, but as soon as they are outside they fall back into their earlier positions within a handful of steps, Kami helping herself to Spirit's arm and him letting her with no more protestation than a rise of self-conscious color.

"You going to be gentlemen and walk us home?" Kami asks before Spirit can think what to say. So "Of course," he answers, and they all four pace down the darkening alleys of Death City with the same two-sided conversation as before.

After the scrutiny in the coffee shop, Spirit is actually relieved to have Stein behind him. Unsettling though it is to not be able to see the meister, it is much easier than trying to actively avoid his gaze. In the growing shadows of nightfall it is easy for Spirit to let his attention wander, to relax some of the tension in his shoulders and convince himself this was a success, that maybe Kami and Ashe had a good time, that maybe he has at least a friend after tonight.

When they get to the girls' apartment, Ashe stops first; Kami lets Spirit lead her another few steps before she slowly comes to a stop. When he turns around her face is cast in his shadow and her head is tipped down so he can't read her eyes. Just over her shoulder Ashe is pointedly fumbling with her keys, not looking at them with so much care that Spirit feels her avoidance as if she is staring. Stein is still watching, of course, hands in his pockets and leaning slightly back from he and Kami. Then Kami lifts her head and the motion pulls Spirit's eyes to her face again and even with the heavy sense of expectation in the air adrenaline fizzes through him.

"Thanks for coming out with us," she is saying. "I had a great time."

Spirit opens his mouth to say something, agreement in all likelihood, but then Kami leans in and presses her mouth against his cheekbone and he forgets what he was going to say and why his mouth is open at all. Her lips are ridiculously soft and damply warm against his skin; when she rocks back the air cools the moisture so it leaves a chill afterimage. Spirit *doesn't* lift his hand to the spot, but only because he can't remember how to move any of his body parts. Kami smiles at him again, teeth flashing white in the fading light and her eyes sparkling with some combination of delight and fear and excitement that Spirit can't fully pick apart, and then she releases his arm and almost runs to where Ashe is just getting their door open.

Stein hasn't moved. Spirit can't see his eyes behind the reflection off his glasses, and in the absence of anyone else the physical space between them seems oddly enormous. It is very difficult to make his feet move forward; Spirit is unaccountably afraid of what Stein will say, of what his expression will be when they are close enough for the reflective glare to vanish. But Stein doesn't say anything, doesn't move or respond at all, and when the white light fades his expression is still as perfectly blank as it has been all evening.

The silence is deafening. Spirit clears his throat with exactly as much awkwardness as he feels and attempts to initiate a normal conversation.

"They're nice."

"Yes." Stein doesn't move. "You and Kami get along very well."

Spirit isn't sure if that's a loaded comment or not. "Yes?" His uncertainty comes out in his tone.

Stein turns and Spirit falls in behind him, the reverse of their positions all night. "Of course you do. Do you like her?"

Spirit can *feel* the blood rush to his face in a flood of self-consciousness. "Um. She's great. Yeah. I mean."

"Yes." Stein's voice is still totally flat. Spirit tries to hear some edge of *something*, judgment or anger or amusement, but there is nothing to discern at all. As if to make up for the lack of emotion in the meister, Spirit's adrenaline begins to curdle into worry.

"Are you - okay?" he tries.

"I'm fine." There is really nothing to read at all. Maybe the long evening with Kami has just thrown off Spirit's ability to read Stein's stoicism. He tries to sally forth with his usual mindless chatter; it is harder than usual, between Stein's silence and his own mental distraction and worry, but he manages to fill the space between them with noise until they cover the distance to their own building.


	30. First

The roar in Stein's ears hasn't faded all day. Always in the past the distraction of the sound has risen to a crescendo that drowns out his half-hearted pretense of normalcy or, very rarely, it has ebbed to a hum and then faded into silence. This is the first time it has stayed so constant and so stable, and he's not sure what to do with it. He spent the entirety of last night lying wide-eyed and blind in the darkness, ignoring his vision in favor of focusing on the pounding input from his brain, but that failed to have any effect at all, even when he stayed still until well after Spirit left for school. Reading was his next attempt, but that proved similarly unsuccessful, and his distraction was such that he suspects he will need to entirely review all the information he tried to take in at some later point. Eventually he gave up entirely and left the apartment to wander idly through the city until the ache in his feet and the angle of the sun directed him back towards the DWMA to pick up his partner.

It's not that he didn't expect Kami to be with Spirit; it is more than he hadn't thought of her at all, that in light of his own personal epiphany the original cause of said revelation was entirely subsumed. His mental catalog chose this moment to come back online, to point out the smile on her lips and the hand against Spirit's arm and the angle of her body towards the weapon, and there was such a wave of murderous rage that Stein felt it even under the shell of calm over his face and the numbing sound of his pending madness. He had to drag his eyes away from the other meister before it quieted, focus hard on the details of his weapon until he could entirely ignore the peripheral information from the people around them.

While they are at the coffee shop, Stein determines that Spirit parts his hair slightly off-center, that his eyebrows are a darker shade of red than his hair, that he has three freckles on the ring finger of his right hand, and that the cross pin on his left collar is twisted at a different angle than the one on the right. He also determines that the bitter sensation of coffee on his tongue and the blistering heat in his throat serve admirably as distractions from Kami's voice and laugh and hands, giving him something else to focus on in addition to the minutiae of Spirit's face and hands and clothes. This self-imposed focus lasts him up until they are standing outside Kami's apartment and the other meister leans in towards Spirit. Her movement takes Stein so totally by surprise that he doesn't have time to do anything but stare while Kami brushes her lips against Spirit's skin, and then he is too frozen by the effort of forcing back the jealous violence in his blood to do anything but wait for the girls to leave and Spirit to come back to him.

Stein loses the entirety of the walk back to their apartment. He is speaking occasionally, responding automatically, but he doesn't remember what he says to Spirit. What he does remember are the plans whirling in his head, invented and discarded in an instant, until one rises to the surface and lingers, fleshing itself in the bitter dregs of possessiveness, so by the time their door shuts behind them Stein has a fully-fledged scheme on his hands.

Spirit has been eying him sideways in a way he probably thinks is subtle ever since Kami left and his attention turned back to Stein. There is a crease between his eyebrows and the corners of his lips are angled down in a frown of concern that Stein suspects Spirit doesn't know he's making. When the meister looks at the weapon's wavelength, it is nearly vibrating with so much adrenaline and worry and tension that Stein very nearly reaches out to touch it as if it has a physical presence he could pass his fingers through.

Spirit sighs and brings his hand up to unconsciously rub the tension in his forehead. "I'm going to bed, Stein." He drops his hand, looks up at Stein with worry all over his face before he tries to drag up a thin veneer of cheer in the form of a smile that doesn't touch his eyes. "Have a good night."

"Yes." Stein looks for the correct response here. "You too." He stays where he is, letting Spirit maneuver around him, and barely represses the urge to turn and watch the weapon as he goes into his room. He waits where he is for several minutes before he goes to turn off the light and carefully come back across the moonlit room so he can settle against the wall just alongside Spirit's door and wait for proper sleep to overcome the weapon's consciousness.

It takes a long time. The quarter moon sets before the restless shifting from the other side of the door slows and stops, leaving the hallway in near-perfect darkness while Stein waits for the sound of the long, slow breaths of sleep. Usually this doesn't take long - Spirit usually is asleep within minutes of lying down - but tonight the weapon is tossing and turning, kept awake by what Stein assumes is the lingering adrenaline he saw in Spirit's wavelength. Finally the sounds fade to silence, and after the silence comes the unconscious hiss of sleeping breath. Stein stands and opens the door.

Spirit's room has a window like Stein's, but unlike the meister's this one is uncovered to the night sky. With the moon below the horizon it is still very dark, but in the absence of any other light the flicker of the stars casts enough illumination to see at least the outlines of the furniture so Stein doesn't actually trip over anything. Spirit himself is sprawled face-down over the top of his bedsheets, and the bit of Stein not currently drowned out by his internal static is deeply, profoundly grateful for the increased summer heat that renders both shirt and sheets unnecessary. The other boy's limbs are faintly outlined in the starlight and his hair casts his shoulders in night-dark shadow. Stein stands over him for a very long minute, just looking, and then he reaches out and brushes his fingers down the very center of Spirit's back.

When he thinks of this later, Stein is appalled by his lack of planning. If Spirit had woken, he had absolutely no explanation ready to offer. But the line of shadow cast by the weapon's spine draws his hand like a tether and Spirit doesn't shift, doesn't turn or sigh or anything at all, and Stein's body floods with adrenaline at the weapon's vulnerability, at his own power in this moment.

He kneels beside the bed, suddenly not at all sure that his legs will continue to support him as all the blood in his body pours into the most painful arousal he's ever had. His heartbeat is pounding almost as loud as the white noise in his head and he can feel his pulse in his throat and his temples and his fingertips and this, more than anything before, drives home the *separateness* of Spirit, because the weapon stays deep in the clutches of sleep while Stein feels like he may actually pass out while his body tries to re-establish equilibrium.

When he comes back into full possession of his consciousness and his body, his hand is gripped tight around a handful of the bedsheets and his forehead is pressed against the edge of the bed. He forces himself to pull back, to relax his fingers, to take stock of the situation before he acts on impulse again. He had a plan, he had a goal, and if he is to keep himself on track he needs to keep this in mind and not press himself against Spirit like his blood is telling him to. It takes a long time with his troublesome hands clasped tightly in his lap before Stein trusts his body enough to continue.

He has collected various antiseptics and, more applicably, anesthetics over the past several months; not with this in mind, certainly, but with them close to hand it seems foolish to not make use of them. It takes almost none at all to numb a long rectangle of skin just above Spirit's hip, far enough back that he won't see it himself but that it will be clear to anyone behind him. Stein doesn't let that thought coalesce any further, but even the trailing edges of angry possessiveness are enough to keep his focus on the task at hand.

Up until now, the only proper dissection Stein has done is on animals, mostly small, that he has been able to catch or collect from the forest. The infirmary has taken care of all his and Spirit's wounds, and while he has studied several medical prints and Marie's injury as closely as possible, there is still a moment with Spirit's unbroken skin before him and the scalpel in his hand when even his internal buzz dims and he has the sense of teetering on the edge of a precipice that he will never be able to return from. There is a murmur far back in his mind, whispering about trust and affection and guilt, but it is easy to ignore, and the fire in his veins demands expression on the canvas of his partner.

Spirit's skin parts so easily that at first Stein isn't even sure he's applying sufficient pressure, but when he pushes harder there is an answering trail of darkness-black blood following the line of the blade. The meister's breath drops out from under him and *there*, the monotone hum in his mind swells to a crescendo at last, desire and jealousy and anger and aggressive satisfaction swirling together to override his rationality.

The incision is nearly two inches long when he makes himself stop. It is narrow and clean enough that the blood is already clotting, clinging sticky to his fingers when he presses them against the welling liquid, and is it *really* possible for Spirit to sleep through this? But the weapon still hasn't stirred, is still breathing in the slow rhythm of the truly asleep, and Stein brings his blood-damp fingers to his mouth and presses his tongue against the moisture. They taste like copper and iron and inexplicably, faintly, like coffee, and he's fairly certain that last is his brain's invention and not reality but it doesn't matter at this point because if he doesn't trust his brain than what can he trust, after all. He doesn't have any sort of equipment to stitch up the wound, and the back of his mind notes this as a future consideration (as well as the possibility of a more sanitary setting), but for now this should heal cleanly and relatively quickly.

The dissipation of the noise in his head has occurred so quickly that Stein feels like his ears are still ringing with the expectation of sound. His body feels limp and drained now that the tension of possibility has collapsed into the actuality of reality, but before he goes he reaches out to balance himself with an outstretched arm against the wall alongside the bed. He runs his tongue along the line of the wound, letting his other senses fade under the metallic assault on his taste, and then closes his mouth and presses his lips hard against the vertebrae at the base of Spirit's spine. It leaves a pale red imprint there, but Stein is confident that it will wash away before Spirit sees it in the morning, and the idea of the weapon sleeping with the impression of Stein's lips on his skin is too satisfying to forgo.

Stein leaves before he is tempted to do more. There will be other times, he tells himself, other days and other nights and other opportunities. Patience will be his aim. Spirit is *his* partner, after all. Waiting will only benefit him.

After he convinces himself of this, Stein goes back to his own room, calmly strips down, shuts his eyes, and tastes Spirit on his tongue and sees him behind his eyelids while he brings himself to the most painfully intense orgasm of his entire life.


	31. Morning

Spirit wakes up well after the sun the next day. The increasing light in his room doesn't interrupt his sleep, but eventually he rolls over and the illumination pouring through his window hits him full in the face and even he can't manage to sleep through that.

Usually he has the apartment to himself for the first few hours on a weekend, but after he's pulled on a shirt and comes out of his room Stein is curled over their rarely-used dining table with a book instead of locked up in his room. Spirit's memories are still floating up from the depths of sleep, but when he sees Stein all the events of the night before come back and he feels a surge of guilt for taking the meister out for the socializing he hates, and his mouth is still not quite ordinarily controlled so his mental state translates directly to his lips.

"Sorry."

Stein looks up from his reading. Spirit had hoped that the distance in his meister was his imagination or maybe related to the company, but the younger boy still looks as removed as he did yesterday.

"What?"

Spirit shrugs and looks away. Apologies are hard enough in general; with an unresponsive audience his throat wants to pull back even what he's said so far. "Sorry I dragged you out yesterday. It seemed like it would be fun but I don't think you had a good time."

"It was fine."

This is such an obvious lie that Spirit rolls his eyes and laughs briefly. "Yeah, sure. Anyway, I'm sorry, okay? I'll think better next time."

Stein hasn't looked away. Spirit isn't sure he's even blinked. "Okay."

This is pretty clearly the best thing to forgiveness Spirit's likely to get, so he leaves the conversation at that and Stein to his reading while he rinses sleep off his skin. There is an ache when the hot water pours across his back; when he reaches around there is what feels like a long scratch just alongside his spine. Spirit doesn't remember hurting himself, but injuries are a common enough occurrence that he dismisses it almost immediately.

When he comes back out Stein is still just where he left him. The other boy looks up as Spirit comes through the room, watches him as he goes by, and then just as Spirit is about to go into his room Stein speaks.

"Spirit."

The weapon pauses with his hand on the doorknob. "Yeah?"

"I talked to Lord Death this morning."

"I'm going to get dressed, but keep talking," Spirit offers as he steps into his room. "What about?"

There is a breath of a pause before Stein speaks again. "I was asking him about another assignment."

"Oh." Spirit takes a minute to pull on a pair of jeans while he waits to see if his brain will offer up any panic. When it seems it won't, he continues. "What did he say?"

"He asked if you were amenable."

Spirit is fairly certain that is not exactly the language Lord Death used, but the point is there. "Huh."

Stein says something but Spirit can't make it out. "Come into the hallway so I can hear you, it's a little weird yelling this conversation."

There is a much longer pause, so long that Spirit isn't sure Stein is coming at all, but then the meister appears in his doorway and leans against the frame, arms crossed defensively in front of him.

"I think I'm up for another," Spirit tells Stein while he tries to pull his hair into order. "I mean something easier would be nice, but I don't want to hold us back and I think I'll be okay." The next question is obvious but seems odd to put to Stein. "What about you?" Spirit asks as he turns to pull a T-shirt out of the closet.

Stein exhales behind him, the sound very much like a sigh, and when Spirit glances back there is a rare softness at the corners of his eyes although the rest of his face is still shuttered.

"Are you not feeling up to it?" Spirit guesses as he tugs the cloth over his head. "I wouldn't mind some more time myself; honestly I've been kind of avoiding thinking about it."

He emerges from the shirt, but the addition of vision doesn't enormously help. Whatever has created the wall in Stein's eyes is showing no signs of fading; the most information Spirit can get is from the tightness in Stein's shoulders and the pressure of the meister's fingers gripping his own elbows.

In spite of the physical stress Spirit can see, Stein shakes his head in the negative. "No, I'm ready to go back out. If you're sure you are I'll ask him for a new target."

"Yeah, okay."

Spirit expects Stein to wander away at this point, but the meister stays where he is, his blank gaze fixed incongruously on Spirit's left hand instead of his face. It doesn't take long for Spirit to feel the tendrils of self-conciousness creeping through him until he becomes hyper-aware of every breath, every shift of his body.

"What's up?" he finally manages into what is rapidly turning into a loaded silence.

Stein blinks, almost shakes his head, looks back up to meet Spirit's eyes. "I asked to move out of the apartment."

Spirit's stomach drops unpleasantly, as if gravity has suddenly turned up for just that part of his body. He opens his mouth to demand why, but it takes a minute before the ice of panic abate enough for him to parse the words of his question. "You want your own place?"

Stein rocks back on his heels and all the tension in his shoulders and hands vanishes. His eyes go wide and startled; his mouth actually drops open. "*What*? No! Why -" The meister closes his mouth on whatever he is about to say. He stares at Spirit for a minute, then laughs hard and sharp. "Ha! No. I want *us* to move."

"Oh." Spirit is feeling light-headed with relief. "That's good." He sits down on the edge of his bed, locking his arms out so they are holding him up, and laughs weakly. "I thought you were breaking up with me."

There is something raw in the sound Stein makes; it starts like a laugh but ends like a whimper. When Spirit looks up the meister has lifted one hand to cover his face and his shoulders are shaking with unidentified emotion. The older boy tries a shaky smile even though Stein can't see. "I'm glad you're amused. That was terrifying."

"Let me try that one again." Stein's voice is muffled behind his hand. There is a long pause before he lets his arm drop, and when he does his features are entirely composed. "I asked Lord Death if there's another place *we*" - the emphasis is barely there, but in Stein's usual monotone it is as tangible as a touch - "could move into."

"Okay." Spirit's adrenaline is fading as rapidly as it came. "Why? Not that I mind-" he offers quickly, "-but is there a reason?"

Stein shifts so his lean against the doorframe is more pronounced, opens his mouth, closes it, looks away. It is the closest thing to *uncomfortable* that Spirit has ever seen out of the meister. Finally he looks back as his fidgeting fades.

"I want better resources for my experimentation," he says. "It's been fine while I've been dabbling, but I want to start taking my work more seriously and I need more space and more equipment to do so."

Spirit wouldn't ever have described Stein as *dabbling* in *anything*, but the logic seems reasonable. "Does he have something he can give us?"

A single nod. "It sounds that way. After next week we can move in whenever we want."

"Cool. That'll be better for you; something to do during the day other than - whatever it is you do now." Spirit stands. "Are you in the middle of something now? It'd be good to get out of the apartment if you want to go out for a walk or something."

Stein looks faintly surprised at the offer, but then he half-smiles before he catches himself. Spirit wishes the guarded distance in his eyes would disappear, but a smile isn't bad so he doesn't push it.

"Yeah, sure," the meister responds. "Give me a minute."


	32. Isolation

Stein comes back to visit Marie again on Monday, while Spirit is gone at class. He wasn't originally intending on going, but the empty apartment is oppressive in a way it has never been before, and even interactions with a mostly-stranger are more tempting to Stein than letting the buzz of his thoughts echo off the walls of the house.

The nurse doesn't say anything, just nods with a funny half-smile that is something more than general politeness but that Stein doesn't bother to read further. The girl is looking much more alert than she was last time; she is sitting up in her bed, bent over something on her lap, and her hair has some semblance more order than it did originally. Her head snaps up at the sound of footsteps and she sits up all the way, her mouth curving up in a smile as she recognizes Stein.

"Hey." Her voice is faintly shaky. She sets the book she was reading aside without looking, reaches up to pull her hair back from her face and twist it over one shoulder. "I wasn't sure you'd come back."

"I wanted to see how your recovery was going." Stein sits on the bed next to hers again in exactly the same place he occupied on his last visit. The weapon turns to face him fully, drawing her feet up to cross them in front of her. The bruising across her face has faded somewhat; it is still impressively colorful, but the red and purple has faded into sickly greens and yellows in most places. Her eyepatch is still covering what Stein assumes is the worst of her injuries, but jumping right into that is unlikely to get a positive response so he stalls instead. "How have you been feeling?"

"Physically or mentally?" she answers with a laugh that cuts off abruptly as it sticks in her throat.

"Both."

The girl sighs, a long shaky exhale, and turns her head so all Stein can see is the darkness of her eyepatch. Without the expression in her good eye to read he is more lost than usual; he tries Soul Perception, but that doesn't help much. Her wavelength is more stable than it was; he hadn't even realized before that it was trembling on his first visit, but in comparison that is gone now. It is still crushed in on itself, though, pinned down by guilt or stress or pain or grief; he can't tell the cause, only the effect, which is to leave him nearly as blind as he was last week.

The weapon begins to speak. "I'm - physically, things are better. They let me look in a mirror yesterday, you know." She laughs again, and it cuts off in the same way as her first. There is a pause before she goes on. "I look pretty terrible but they say it's getting better. It must have been *awful* to start."

"You do look much better," Stein offers. He means it as exactly what he says, but the girl brings her head around to stare at him, her body half-drawn back like she's expecting a slap.

"I don't know how you could stand it last week," she half-mumbles. "Not exactly the first impression I'd like you to have."

Stein shrugs. "I've seen injuries before." Though none quite as messy as hers. "And it wasn't my first impression. We did meet before."

This is also strictly true, but the weapon straightens up and there is a hint of tension at the edges of her mouth that suggests a repressed smile. "Well at least there's that." She hesitates before going on when he doesn't say anything else. "I was kind of out of it last week, too. Lots of painkillers. Less this week, so I think I'm more coherent, but I guess you'll be the best judge of that as well. Nothing hurts too badly - I can sleep, at least, and they say that will help my recovery as much as anything else."

She stops. The prelude to the smile fades and her eye unfocuses from Stein's face. He waits to see if she will continue, but when it becomes clear that she won't he pushes her back on subject. "And mentally?"

The girl takes a very deep breath. He can hear shaking in the sound of her inhale and her eye goes liquid-bright when she blinks, but when she speaks her voice is carefully controlled, if so quiet he has to lean forward to hear.

"Last week - everything was terrible. Unbearable. All I did was sleep and wait to sleep and sleep some more. It was easier than thinking at all. Now -" She stops and there is another one of those extra-long breaths before she can continue. "It's better in that I can *do* things, read or write or think about something else, but right when I think everything is fine something totally random will remind me and -" She chokes to a halt and turns away again, breathing loud and uneven in the quiet of the room.

"Are visitors very bad then?"

"I wouldn't know, actually, since you're the only person who's come to see me."

Her words are hard and whip-fast. Stein imagines that someone else would be hurt by her tone, but she's clearly not angry with him and as long as she keeps talking he is satisfied.

"I'm -"

"Sorry," she cuts him off. She still isn't looking at him but her voice has gone quiet and soft again. "I don't want to chase you away along with everyone else. It's good to talk about it, about anything really. It's good to have someone to talk *to*. I just wish my friends from before would come to see me." Her fingers pick at the top of the thin sheet. "It doesn't help the loneliness to be so isolated here."

"I understand," Stein says. He expects the words to feel like a lie but the memory of the echoing emptiness in his apartment rises and they come out with something very close to sincerity. "A little, at least."

"At least you're here," she goes on. "At least you're asking how I'm doing. And either you're not freaked out about how I look or you're a really good actor. Don't tell me if it's the second, I'd rather believe you're just strangely calm about all of this than that you are secretly internally screaming."

Stein laughs before he catches himself and pulls back to a safer mental distance. "I'm studying anatomy. There's not a lot of injuries that would unsettle me."

"Ah, so I'm a test subject then?"

The words are light. The weapon even turns back to him, smirking slightly, but then she is talking over whatever response he might make, which is a relief because Stein wasn't expecting her to so accurately describe their relationship and he's struggling to come up with appropriate misdirection.

"I should be an interesting case, at least. I'm actually a little affronted that you aren't panicking about my wounds. After all the suffering I've gone through at least a little horror would be nice."

This is teasing, Stein thinks. Her tone is light and her mouth is smiling in spite of the insulted meaning of her words. He tries a smile of his own and attempts to respond in kind.

"Well you've been keeping the worst hidden. How am I to know how shocked I should be without a reference point? Otherwise I might use up all my reaction on something that turns out to be trivial."

His tone isn't quite right - it comes out sounding too flat, without enough of the high-range energy in the girl's - but it is apparently close enough. The weapon grins in the most relaxed expression he's seen from her this whole time and reaches for her eyepatch.

"Prepare yourself to be thoroughly horrified," she offers as she carefully lifts it.

The injury is *much* better than it was. The wound itself is visibly healing; much of the raw inflammation from the original damage has faded, although there is still clearly a long way to go. The stitches lie more smoothly too; Stein can see that once they are removed the scar will be impressively clean and straight, as unobtrusive as a blinding injury could be. He is thinking of Spirit, of the way this scar will stay with Marie as physical evidence of this mental trauma, and the tiny cut along his weapon's skin. He wonders if that will leave a permanent sign as well or if more physical damage is required to produce such.

He has unconsciously leaned in just as he did last time, not realizing he is bridging the distance between them until his awareness recenters in his body. Marie is breathing faster, a very slight increase that Stein wouldn't notice except that he is closer to her and his own breath is speeding up. He hadn't intended to cross into her personal space this time, had actively worked against it, and as he leans back he forces his thoughts back in order by berating himself for losing his focus at a crucial time like this.

"That *is* terrible." He is attempted to return to his earlier tone but it is difficult to remember what he *should* sound like, much less imprint the knowledge on his vocal chords. "Consider me deeply frightened."

"I can tell." The weapon resettles her patch. There is something strange in her expression, but her lips are curved into a sideways smile and that seems to be a good sign. "You're definitely on the verge of fleeing, I can tell. Nightmares will plague you all week before you are able to muster up the courage to return."

"Absolutely."

"So." She is touching her hair again, twisting it into a thick golden coil before letting it go and starting over. "What awful things do you want to dredge up now, doctor?"

Stein actually would like to go back to the topic of her mental state, but the tone of the conversation has shifted and there's not an easy way to return.

"What were you reading?" he tries instead.

This catches her attention, as it was intended to, and the girl cheerfully talks to herself while Stein nods and agrees and doesn't hear a word she says, lost in his own plans and thoughts.


	33. Independence

"Aren't you nervous?" Kami asks when Spirit tells her about his new assignment. She has taken to meeting him in the hall before class so they gain a handful of additional minutes of awkwardly intense small talk. Spirit wishes he knew how exactly she can make conversation about homework set his blood fizzing, but somehow she manages every time.

This topic is somewhat more serious; even Kami's lighthearted chatter is dimmed by the subject matter. Spirit shrugs and looks away from her face; it seems the best thing to do if he is to give the topic the full consideration it deserves.

"Yes," he says, because he doesn't trust himself to lie convincingly enough on this.

"Why are you rushing it?" Kami asks, and there is a note of frustration in her voice that makes Spirit wish he dared to look at her face. "You could take some time. You could be putting yourself and your partner at risk if you come at this too soon. Marie's not even out of the infirmary yet."

Spirit can't find the words for what he is feeling. He is touched by her concern, pleased and flattered by the implication of her care for him, but the dark truth in the corner of his mind is that if he doesn't go *now*, *soon*, he will never again find the courage to face the rising terror in his mind. And underneath that there is an even greater fear, that if he doesn't do something, anything, soon the wall just behind Stein's eyes will become permanent and he'll never be able to break through it.

Something of the latter must be carried through his silence because Kami heaves a sigh. "You're so patient, really, it's impressive. I don't think anyone else would have put up with him this long."

"Mmm." Spirit wants to change the subject. After their single attempt at a group outing, Kami's tone with regard to Stein has gone from faintly impressed to gently critical, and he hates feeling like he has to choose between Kami's cheerful friendliness and his loyalty to his meister. "Let's talk about something else?"

Kami's hand touches his arm and when he looks back she is gazing up at him with an apology in her eyes. "Sorry," she offers. "I don't mean to pick on your partner. I just don't know how you can put up with his - eccentricities." She smiles and the seriousness is gone. "Maybe we're more similar than I think. We both get along with you just fine."

"I just wish you got along better with each other," Spirit sighs.

"It's not *me* that-" Kami cuts herself off and tucks her lips between her teeth, her face contorting in a way that manages to be ridiculous and yet still absurdly attractive. Spirit has to laugh, and then she is laughing too.

"Sorry. It's hard to sidestep when you give me such a perfect opening for snark. Lucky for you I am a perfect lady."

"Yeah, sure." Spirit is still not very good at coming up with quips of his own, but he is slowly learning the correct time to offer an edge of sarcasm, and this time Kami rewards him with a gentle punch that feels a lot more like a caress than anything else.

The weapon does not know what to do with Kami. On the one hand the physical contact is like a drug; the casual brush of her hand against his skin or the pressure of her thigh against his as she sits plausibly-too-close in class leaves him high on adrenaline for hours after. He would trail her for that alone, if that was all she was offering. But there is a sparkle in her eyes that promises more, even though he's still not sure what exactly "more" entails - flirting? kissing? further? - and he keeps thinking about the electric hiss of her lips against his cheek a few days ago and wondering if maybe she's waiting for him to make the next move. But then they'll be chatting, just laughing or teasing each other, and Kami will turn her head away and her eyes will catch the light and suddenly they look like Stein's, and Spirit will be hit by a wave of inexplicable guilt, like he's betraying his relationship with his meister somehow by letting himself be friends (maybe more?) with someone else, and so far that has held him back from any move of his own.

Kami has that sparkle in her eyes now, and Spirit is half-relieved and half-disappointed that they are nearly at their classroom, because if they were alone together more often or for longer he's not sure he could stand to let the tension hum where it does.

"We're moving soon too," he offers in the interest of filling the cavernous silence. "Probably right after we get back from our assignment."

"I think it's exciting that you'll be out of an apartment. You'll be a grown-up and everything in a house of your own."

"It's not exactly a house," Spirit tries to reign in her enthusiasm. "More of a glorified workshop with some beds and a kitchen. At least I'm hoping for a kitchen. I haven't had the nerve to ask yet."

"It's still exciting. You'll have to let me come over so I can actually stretch out. I've shrunk three inches since I started here from necessity; otherwise I don't fit when I lie down in bed."

"It can't be that bad," Spirit laughs, but Kami is shaking her head in mock solemnity as she pulls the door open and gestures for him to go first.

"Oh, but it is. The only reason I haven't had you over to see the horror for yourself is that I think we might run out of useable space with three people in the apartment and we'd all have to be piled on top of each other, and that would make Ashe nervous and you would blush and I think Stein might actually kill me."

She is joking, and Spirit knows she is trying to get the aforementioned reaction out of him, but the knowledge doesn't stop him from flushing at the mental image her words bring up, however silly it is.

"So I'll just have to invite myself over to yours," she is laughing now, but her chin is down so her eyes are dark in shadow and they are utterly serious before she turns her head away with a color in her cheeks to echo Spirit's own. "Do you want some help moving? I could drag Ashe out and we could haul boxes back and forth."

They don't need help and Spirit knows it. The academy will undoubtedly provide as much assistance as they need to move the complexities of boxes and furniture out of the middle of Death City to their new home on the outskirts. He can explain this, politely decline, and keep on nursing this tiny relationship within the confines of class instead of letting it spread and creep into coffee shops and the pathways of his life and the walls of his home. Stein would rather he did, Spirit knows this as well. But even in the grip of the constant, inexplicable embarrassment that Kami throws him into, he knows that he *doesn't* want that for himself, and in the pause between this thought and the decision to act on it he is already speaking.

"Sure. We could always use an extra pair of hands."

The warmth of self-determined satisfaction stays with him all day.


	34. Distance

It's not that Stein has been dreading the upcoming fight. As usual, as always, his heart is pounding with the pleasurable anticipation of violence, the surety of victory and ensuing destruction. He has been looking forward to it as he always looks forward to assignments, with a darkly vicious excitement.

He is just - worried. His mind has not been entirely his own these past few days; raw memories of Spirit will catch him unawares when he is thinking about something entirely different, and then there is nothing he can do to *stop* thinking about his partner. His original late-night recklessness and the potential for his experiment to have gone horribly awry unsettle him, and he has been avoiding any sort of repeat performance until he has full confidence in his own application of rationality to the situation. In the meantime their next assignment has caught up with him and now he is confronted with the possibility of working with Spirit before he is entirely sure of himself. Vulnerability isn't something Stein is accustomed to feeling, although he has seen it in the wide eyes and trembling lips of others - now he feels like partnering with, Resonating with, Spirit will leave him horribly and brutally exposed, and he can't even be certain what will become visible.

This all means that he stays up for the two days preceding the assignment. He tends to think better on less sleep, and this way if everything goes wrong he can retreat into unconsciousness for half a day or so while the worst of the storm passes him by. By the time Spirit has come back from class on the day itself, Stein has led himself slide into the distant, faint interest of extreme exhaustion. The possible dangers of this do not present themselves to him. It has never been a problem before.

"Are you sure you're ready?" Spirit asks, and his voice is coming as if from a long ways off, and "Yes," Stein tells him. The weapon's face creases into deeper concern rather than lesser, but he doesn't vocalize any further doubt, and when Stein leads the way out to the target's suspected location his weapon follows in silence. The meister can feel the weight of Spirit's worry pressing between his shoulderblades. He's not sure if this sensation is a comfort or a burden or both, and at the moment he is doing all he can to entirely ignore it. When Stein draws to a halt, Spirit transforms before the meister even says anything. Stein has a moment to relish the burst of pleasure that this instant responsiveness causes before he catches the scythe and devotes all of his focus to controlling his thoughts.

When they first fought together, even in their practice combat at the edge of the woods or in the classroom, Stein *liked* the bleed-over of thoughts that he got from Spirit. Spirit's mind is so much more emotional than his own; hearing the faint whisper of the older boy's reactions gave him enormous amounts of data to reflect on later. After his recent reflection Stein has also determined that he has been coming to crave the closeness that Spirit's weapon form gives them, the associated difficulty in distinguishing one self from another. Since his personal epiphany, he has been dreading it. He has never tried to hide his thoughts from Spirit. There has never before been a need. While Spirit is clearly stressed by his self-imposed distance, when they are both in human form Stein can remember that the weapon is a fully separate person, and the distance keeps Spirit from seeing more of Stein than the meister wants to show. Stein is not sure he will be able to hide his self-awareness from his weapon when the lines between them blur, and it is utterly crucial that he prevent Spirit from having the same realization that he himself came to. Why, he is not certain, but he feels down in his blood and his bones that he has to keep this locked in his own mind. So when his fingers close around Spirit and the murmur of the weapon's thoughts overlays the purring static of Stein's, the meister pulls back as far as he can from the connection and steps hard on any emotional reaction that tries to rise.

There is a flutter of worry from the weapon, the suggestion of *Stein?* in his thoughts, but Stein doesn't respond and Spirit's side of the interaction fades into the background. There are only the shadows around them and his tight-drawn focus on what little there is to see.

When the first attack comes, Stein is ready. He doesn't see its approach, but he hears the scuff of steps and brings the scythe in his hands up around behind him to block the near-silent swing. Spirit yelps in the back of his head, caught unprepared by the movement in Stein's mental silence, but the blow ricochets off and Stein pivots to face their attacker.

This particular target is on the more human end of the scale; glowing red eyes as usual, but still of relatively reasonable size, just slightly taller than the meister when hunched over so it can brace itself on the ground with one elongated arm. Its mouth is toothier than most humans', but Stein notes all this at the distance of his sleep deprivation and the coolly deliberate removal of all emotions. When it swings at him he steps sideways, not even raising Spirit in an attempt to block. He doesn't need to and he knows it; the attack is a feint, and his movement takes him just barely far enough out of range that it misses him. The margin is so close that the wind of the creature's motion ruffles his hair and Spirit hisses in fright, but the extra movement is just wasted effort and Stein feels oddly clear, like detaching from Spirit's emotional responses (and his own) has left him perfectly rational and coldly capable.

The next attack is also easily dodged, but the third and fourth come in quick succession and draw Stein's guard up. He catches them both on the handle of the scythe, turning from one to the other almost before he sees them coming. Spirit is lagging - Stein can feel the jerkiness in his attention as each motion catches him slightly off-balance - but with the separation the meister is imposing the effects of this on Stein are drastically reduced, so he is aware of it but unaffected.

Stein steps sideway, blocks again, tries for quick slash but draws back. He feels like his awareness is up behind his head, outside of the confines of his skull and unfettered by fear or worry or satisfaction. His body moves like a dancer's but he feels like it is a puppet, obeying his commands but totally incapable of conveying any damage to him. His hands shift and change grip to drive the end of the scythe into the Kishin egg's abdomen. It doubles over but swipes at him again as it does so. He has to jump backwards faster than he expected to dodge, and he doesn't quite clear it. Torn fingernails dig into the fabric of his coat and tear through the cloth to gouge at the skin underneath.

Even the bright star of pain from that isn't enough to recenter him in his body. Spirit is focused on him - his wavelength is vibrating with concern and he is almost yelling at the back of Stein's head as he tries to get the meister's attention - but Stein shove that awareness back against the inside of his brain and advances again, angling low to the ground and keeping Spirit over his head protectively. The target waits for him, looking almost passive as he approaches. In the space between one step and the next its muscles tighten and it explodes towards him, swinging with what seems like more limbs than Stein thought it had, raining down blows on him so fast that he can't fight back and can't effectively block them. He ducks beneath the cross at the top of the scythe in his hands and lets Spirit take the hits instead of him, at least for the most part. Spirit is properly yelling now, as if he actually needed to increase volume to be heard over the sound of claws against metal. The mental sound is faint, as if from a great distance, but it has all the strained sound of a scream behind it. Stein's name is in there, along with something that is part command and part question, but the meister shoves the understanding away again. He is too close to do anything with the blade in his hands, and he can't shift the weapon without losing the meager cover he has. There is an obvious solution, of course, but just at the moment the idea of resonating with Spirit and the potential result of that is far worse in Stein's head than the alternative.

Stein is still thinking through his options looking for the out he knows is there when the muted sound of Spirit's voice in the back of his head cuts off abruptly. The silence is far more distracting than the mumble of volume was.

"Spirit?" Stein asks out loud.

Spirit says something, or tries to say something, but now that Stein's actually paying attention the words have lost the structure to carry any meaning other than the pain underlying them. Stein has never heard Spirit sound that way. A chill creeps over his skin and his consciousness comes back to its normal position behind his eyes with jarring rapidity.

He is on his feet again, up from his defensive crouch and stepping backward to gain the distance he needs to swing properly. The Kishin egg is moving towards him but the charge is impossibly slow and the delay gives him more than enough time to savor the cold sweat of what must be fear in the echoing silence from his partner. He keeps expecting the weapon in his hands to disintegrate into the boy it is, and while he is impressed with Spirit's apparent fortitude, the sense of urgency rising in his blood will cripple him if he doesn't move immediately.

He crouches low to let the incoming swing curve over his hair. When he moves in and pulls hard to arc the black blade in his hands towards the monster, there is an unfamiliar tightness between his shoulderblades. If Spirit passes out, they will both be left entirely defenseless. The thing to do would be to retreat, but Stein's not sure he knows how to do that, so instead he takes their lives and bets them on Spirit.

Stein hasn't ever misjudged his partner. Fortunately this is no exception. The creature in front of them shatters into a spray of blood that paints the meister's face in victory just as the blue flash of transformation pulls Spirit from Stein's hands and back into his own body.

Spirit folds up like there is no strength left in him to hold him up. Stein's mouth isn't working right. His arms won't move, his feet are frozen in place. Spirit coughs wetly and spits red. What Stein can see of the weapon's skin is already darkening with blood rising to the surface from deep damage.

Spirit's name is on Stein's cold lips and he's not sure he's even vocalized the sound. Spirit's eyes are shut but he almost smiles before the movement turns into a cringe.

"Fuck, Stein." The weapon opens his eyes but they are unfocused and glazed. He laughs, a faint exhalation shallow from the necessity of pain. "Let's not do that again, okay?"

Stein almost smiles, and then Spirit's face goes slack with unconsciousness and there is no room for even token amusement beneath the impossible weight of fear in him.


	35. Connection

Spirit wakes up well before he wants anything to do with consciousness. He is tired right down to his bones, his eyes ache, and every muscle in him feels like it has been beaten bloody, but the last is apparently true and when he shifts in bed the jolt of resultant pain drags him into awareness.

"Ow," he tells his eyelids before he manages to get his eyes open and realizes he has an audience. Stein is sitting in front of him, facing sideways on the infirmary cot, his legs pulled up in front of him and his arms wrapped around his shins so all Spirit can see between the tops of his knees and the fringe of his too-long hair is the shine off his glasses.

Spirit considers sitting up, but lying perfectly flat and still is excruciating enough that he discards the possibility as soon as it offers itself. His whole face hurts, but he attempts a tentative smile. "Hey there."

"Hi." Stein doesn't move. If he tipped his head down or up just slightly the glare would slip off and Spirit could see his eyes, but he is entirely still and the shine does all the work of removal so the meister doesn't have to bother guarding his expression.

"What happened?" Spirit asks. It is the expected question, but that's not why he asks. He recalls enough of the fight and the beating he took and he recognizes the current setting; the lost time of unconsciousness is not difficult to imagine. He means to ask why Stein was so removed, why he has been so distant, what Spirit did to create the wall in Stein's eyes or at least what he can do to remove it.

The extended pause before Stein responds fills with all the meaning Spirit intends, and there is a brief moment when the weapon isn't sure the younger boy will answer at all. When Stein shifts Spirit is coldly certain that he is going to just get up and leave, that he will walk out in silence and nothing will ever be okay again. But the meister just drops his feet off the edge of the bed on which he is sitting, leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, and turns his head so Spirit can see his face.

The distance of the past few days has vanished and Stein's expression is almost unrecognizable. His eyes are the same color they always were, his skin has the same unhealthy pallor of something too long without the sun, his hair is just as uncaringly long as it always is, but everything else is wrong. His eyes are green but glassy like they've never been before, like he's on the verge of tears, and he's looking at the edge of Spirit's mouth instead of meeting the weapon's gaze. His mouth is tight with what Spirit can only assume is repressed emotion and his chin is tipped down with what would be guilt on any other face.

Spirit wishes that the concern that sweeps through him came before the relief, but all his desire to be a better person can't override the painfully sharp release of the tension that Stein's recent distance has caused him. He feels like he can breathe again in spite of the bruises that appear to cover his whole body, and he is smiling even in the face of Stein's obvious emotional turmoil.

The meister takes a very deep breath and slowly exhales before he begins to speak, still with his gaze fixed on Spirit's lips instead of his eyes. It is a little strange, especially given the uncontrollable smile that Spirit is trying and failing to rein in, but at this point Spirit is willing to forgive every single one of his partner's oddities in exchange for seeing some sort of reaction instead of that awful coldness.

"I wasn't thinking clearly," he offers, and that is so frighteningly close to an apology that Spirit's pleasure evaporates into shock. "Thank you."

"What? For what?" They are different questions but Spirit can't parse this conversation at all.

Stein's eyes flicker up to Spirit's for just a moment and then back away. "Protecting me."

Spirit laughs but the sound is cut off by pain, so it comes out as more of a hard exhale than any sound at all. "That's all a weapon is supposed to do, right? Sacrifice my body to defend my meister? At least I did a good job of that."

Stein turns his head up again so his eyes disappear. His hands are clasped in his lap and Spirit realizes that his fingers are pressed so tightly into each other that white outlines are rising around them.

"Spirit -" he starts.

The door to the infirmary comes open so hard that Spirit hears it bounce back off the door. There is the start of a protest from the nurse but the offender is already past the entry. Spirit knows this because it is Kami, and she is coming down the row of beds towards him with an expression on her face that makes him think she is going to hit him.

"Hey," Spirit tries in an attempt to head off whatever fury she is filled with, but she doesn't answer and doesn't slow down and then she's swinging round the edge of the bed on the side not currently occupied by Stein. Her knees hit the edge of the Spirit's bed hard enough that the weapon flinches at the jolt and he starts to speak, panic pulling half-formed thoughts out of him.

"Ka-"

He barely gets the sound of her name out of his throat when the girl catches his head between her hands with a startlingly gentle touch and brings her mouth to press against his.

Spirit has a moment of perfect, stunning clarity of thought. It is as if his body is taking a very deep breath before it floods him with adrenaline. His eyes are focused just past the tangle of Kami's hair on the irregular pattern of the infirmary ceiling. The girl's lips shift slightly and he can feel a chapped edge catch against his skin, and the room is so stunningly silent that he can hear the hiss of Stein's inhale on the far side of him.

And then the adrenaline hits, crushing into him so he exhales hard in what is part a sigh and part a whimper, flickering down his fingertips and sweeping through his blood so it rushes to the surface of his bruised skin and Spirit feels like he must actually be on fire. It only take a moment but he barely has time to begin responding before Kami pulls her mouth back and releases him. She is crying when her face comes into focus for him, her eyes overflowing even though she is smiling like the sun.

"I am *so* glad you are okay," she tells him, sounding as thoroughly nonchalant as if she isn't crying and his lips aren't damp with the taste of her. There is just the faintest quaver on the adverb, a tremble of emphasis in her voice. Spirit can't remember how to speak, much less come up with anything at all to say.

"Uh. Yes. Me too?" There is a bubble of semi-hysterical laughter in his throat but the tightness of shock is keeping it at bay. "I mean for some definitions of okay, yes." She laughs at that, and it only sounds slightly panicked at the very end.

It takes a monumental force of will for Spirit to glance sideways at Stein. He is only too aware that the meisters do not particularly get along in spite of his best efforts to the contrary, and if he had his way he would not have voluntarily chosen for anyone else to be around when Kami kissed him for the first time. He is worried that Stein will be watching him, worried that he won't be, worried that the meister will be mentally pulled back inside his own thoughts again.

Stein doesn't appear to have reacted at all. His eyes are still caught at the corner of Spirit's mouth, the green behind his glasses still shining bright with what are looking more and more like tears the longer Spirit watches if he could only convince himself that is what they are. His hands are relaxed now, his grip gone lose around his own fingers, and the tension in his jaw has bled off, leaving just a barely perceptible shake. Everything about his face is telling Spirit how he is feeling but the clarity of his expression is making him look like a stranger. Spirit didn't know until this moment that Stein *ever* felt this way, that the meister *could* feel the way his face looks. And then Kami's fingertips skim over the tender skin of his wrist, and he is wincing in pain and smiling in pleasure, and then he is looking at her and the world seems like it might be alright again.


	36. Options

Stein waits Kami out. He has nothing to say but neither does she, not really, and he is able to almost entirely ignore her in favor of focusing on Spirit. "Almost" only because Spirit is delighted to see her, and even Stein can't quite block out the knowledge that the pleasure on the weapon's face is for the girl and not for him. He doesn't use Soul Perception. He doesn't need to.

The younger boy does leave shortly after the girl. The silence in Kami's absence is too loaded with things he wants or should say and can't, and while he has avoided anything beyond a brief nod to Marie, he can't dodge further conversation with the quiet spreading around them. When he steps outside the infirmary, Kami is waiting for him.

Her presence brings him up short. Stein is not accustomed to surprise. Marie has been an interesting problem for him to inspect, and Spirit is so easy to read that the meister doesn't usually need to read his wavelength. He was doing such a good job of convincing himself that Kami wasn't there that he never *looked* at her properly, which means he entirely missed the sparking rage that infuses her now when he belatedly uses Perception. He doesn't blink out of it. Given her emotional state it seems safer to know what is coming, and given his own he would rather know the worst right now.

He stops just outside the door. She is facing him, leaning sideways against the wall to give herself the illusion of calm, but her arms are crossed and her wavelength is crackling with barely-suppressed fury. Stein can actually see it expanding as she stares at him. He would be impressed if he allowed the feeling to take hold. She is almost as strong a meister as he is like this, although there is a lack of control in her that has been common to everyone Stein has ever seen. That still doesn't undermine the raw power bleeding from her at the moment.

He doesn't speak, and for a long moment neither does she. They just stand in the empty hallway staring at each other. With Spirit out of eyesight Stein feels like himself again in spite of the continued lack of sleep this most recent catastrophe has caused. Self-assured calm is pouring back into him. Angry meisters don't threaten him any more than Kishin eggs do.

The girl's rising anger eventually breaks free of her tight-knuckled control and she straightens, stepping towards him with a slow deliberation that would probably be horrifying if he were anyone else.

"Stein." Her voice is cold but her wavelength is flaring hot with blistering violence. Stein's response is calculated for neutrality: "Kami," but he knows that calm will fan her rage more than an aggressive response. This is a game he has played before, and even years without practice have failed to remove his knowledge of how to prod someone into violence.

The meister comes right inside his personal space, so close that he loses sight of her wavelength and starts watching her face instead. She is less teary than he expected. He has been expecting her to crumble under the pressure of the emotional turbulence of her wavelength, but when he sees her eyes he revises his estimate. This may turn into a self-destructive fight rather than a dominance game. That suits his mood better than the alternative anyway, but he is again unwillingly impressed with her fortitude.

"Just listen to me," she enunciates with the biting clarity of rage. Her tone is impressively controlled too. Stein's valuation of her self-control is increasing with every word she says, not least because she continues to surprise him. The very back of his mind suggests that he has been deliberately underestimating her from jealousy, but he sets that possibility aside as irrelevant in the moment.

"Go ahead," he starts to say, but she talks over him, leaning into him so she seems to be looming even though he has a few inches of height on her.

"Shut. Up." She takes a deep, slow breath and lets it out before she continues. "I don't know what happened during this last assignment you went on with Spirit. I honestly don't particularly care about the details. I *know* he's never been this beat up before because I've been *watching* him and he's been *fine* before. I don't know what you did, but you did *something*." She half-laughs with no humor at all. "More accurately you *didn't* do something, you didn't do your part as *his meister* to *help* him. Partnerships work in both directions. I thought you knew that, being the 'genius' that you are." Stein can hear the sarcastic quotations around the word. "But now he comes back black and blue and you're barely scratched, and *he's* not angry, he's just glad *you're* okay, but I am *more* than pissed enough for the both of us." The other meister takes another deep breath, and when she speaks again the edge of rising fire in her words is gone again and she is back to icy stillness. "It is a meister's *job* to take care of his weapon and you *failed* to take care of Spirit."

Stein expects the girl is about to shove him or slap him - everything about her approach suggests so - but then she leans away and her face relaxes. For a moment he thinks the worst is over. Then she speaks, and the calm in her voice emphasizes her words more than any anger could.

"Spirit deserves a partner who can keep up his end of the relationship. If you won't do that, I am *more* than capable. He has other options."

Stein's brain takes a long moment to process what the other meister is suggesting. When it comes into focus, he has a single breath in which he understand her meaning but his body hasn't yet reacted to it, and it gives him barely enough time to force a mask over his features before the crushing panic hits him.

The face he shows her is utterly distant. He has had practice with this in the last week and he is more relieved than he can currently comprehend that he has been trying to hide his reactions from Spirit, because this is vastly and infinitely more important. Kami is the last person he wants to know how he feels, and at the moment nothing is more important than hiding his horror at the implication of her words from her.

Spirit is *his* partner. He hasn't ever doubted this, not since they first met in the Death Room. They are perfectly suited, impeccably matched. He hasn't ever wanted any other partner. The idea of *ever* having another has never crossed his mind. The possibility that *Spirit* might want someone else, might *leave* him for someone else, implies a separation between their perspectives that he has never contemplated before even in the midst of his recent revelations. His own satisfaction with their relationship until very, very recently has been synonymous in his mind with Spirit's satisfaction. And after all, regardless of what Kami may have with Spirit, regardless of the physical contact she has been taking from the weapon (and there is a furious rage in him at that that he cannot afford to nurse right now), Spirit is *Stein's* partner, part of him as he will never be part of Kami. That has been a constant comfort, the last refuge of sanity for Stein. Now it is gone as abruptly and easily as if it has never been. Perhaps it was an illusion all along.

Kami holds his gaze for what feels like an eternity while the noise inside his head rises to a crescendo. She finally looks away with a motion that has absolutely no capitulation in it and walks past him as if he wasn't there at all. Only an exertion of will that Stein didn't know he had keeps him on his feet and silent until he is entirely certain the other meister is safely removed. Once he is sure that the hallway is his again, he lets the wall take his weight and the agony of fear take his consciousness. He doesn't know if he stays quiet, but no one comes out to investigate, so he is left alone to curl in around himself for what minimal comfort his own physicality can give. It is not enough. His hands feel cold, totally unlike the constant glowing warmth of Spirit's skin. He realizes he is shaking only when he feels his own body quivering against his palms, notices it as if at a great distance and even then he can't tell if it is cold or adrenaline that grips him.

It takes a long, long time for the shivering to stop.


	37. Conversation

There is a stretch of silence after the two meisters leave. Marie stayed exceedingly quiet while Stein and Kami were in the room, and as soon as she and Spirit are alone Spirit loses his ability to think of anything to say at all. The quiet is just starting to go tense with awkward self-consciousness when Marie clears her throat and forces a laugh.

"They really don't get along, do they?"

Spirit forces himself to turn partway towards her instead of facing the bed where Stein had been sitting. The other weapon is sitting up in bed. She looks better than he expected, although there is a guilty pang as he does the calculation and realizes how long she has had to recover since he saw her last. Marie has an eyepatch covering her eye, and although her face is still a little swollen and faintly discolored it has the look of a rapidly healing bruise.

When Spirit catches up to Marie's mostly-rhetorical question, he tries to shake his head in response. This doesn't go over well with his body, so he speaks instead. "No. Not at all, really." It's strange to talk about Kami with someone else, strange to talk about Stein at all, but Marie is looking at the door instead of at him and the awful tension of the two competing relationships in his life suddenly feels like a weight on Spirit's chest. Words start to come out of him before he can stop them or think that maybe she was just making conversation rather than asking for a confession. "I like them both but they really seem to loathe each other. It's kind of awful having them in the same room, which is too bad because I'd like to spend time with both of them, you know?"

Marie's focus is back on him now, but Spirit is reading sympathy off her face instead of the complex, loaded neutrality of Stein's usual expression, and her quiet attention is giving him an invitation to talk that he is incapable of refusing. "I like Kami - a *lot* - but Stein's my partner and I feel like he disapproves of her. Maybe he has a reason I don't know about, though, and I'm worried he's totally justified, but she's so nice and I don't know why he would dislike her." He chokes a shallow laugh. "I can see why she would dislike him, the way he's been acting with her. Stein's not a particularly likeable person."

Marie starts to shake her head before she cuts off the motion. A tiny curve appears at the corner of her mouth like a secret and her eyes unfocus. "*I* like him."

Something in her tone brings Spirit up short. There's some extra meaning to her words that he's not quite understanding although he can tell it's there, as if it is some invisible wall he can feel but can't see.

"Well. Maybe you're just very forgiving." He tries to sound gently complimentary but the words just come out confused to his own ear. "I mean he hasn't been particularly friendly with you."

The other weapon comes back into focus on Spirit's face. Her face creases into incomprehension for a moment before she speaks. "Well, he was pretty distant during -" Her voice cracks into silence but she carries on speaking so rapidly that Spirit almost doesn't notice the higher pitch in her tone. "It's been great to have a visitor though. I mean -" She waves her hand, looks away. "I know you're busy, of course, and I don't mean this as criticism at all so please don't think I do, but it's been kind of lonely in here on my own since I stopped being entirely drugged up all the time."

Guilt sweeps over Spirit and briefly drowns out the physical ache of his body. He *has* thought of Marie, several times in fact, but the idea of actually *seeing* her has been too awkward to contemplate. He couldn't think what he would say to express sufficient sympathy or what he would do if she started crying or what they would talk about, and it has been easier to just put off the visit he knows he should make.

"I am really sorry," he says, even though Marie is shaking her head in refusal of his apology already. "I - I'm just sorry, about everything." He feels like he should say more, but words are sticking in his throat and he doesn't know how to express what he wants to say without touching on the infinite pool of selfish relief that is still horribly prevalent in him. Then the further implication of her words hits him.

"*Stein* came to visit you?" The emphasis is insulting - he realizes this as soon as the words are out of his mouth - but the shock in him is too great to allow any chance to edit himself before the statement comes out.

Marie looks perplexed. "Didn't you know? I thought -" She stops short. The confusion on her face clears off into a blush that is dark enough that it is clear even over the lingering smudge of bruise. "Yeah. He's been by every couple of days."

Hurt washes over Spirit. He doesn't know why he should feel betrayed or why he should feel jealous, of all things, but that is definitely what this is. His ability to adequately respond to this information is entirely gone, and he has no idea what he must look like; he feels like he's been physically slapped. It doesn't help that his guilt is rising in lockstep with his hurt feelings, that he knows this is unfair and irrational and it's *good* for Stein to have friends, that he can't very well begrudge the meister a relationship when he wants nothing more than to follow up on Kami's recent kiss. But the guilt and the logic are proving utterly useless tools against hurt feelings and a strange sense of panicked abandonment.

Spirit doesn't realize how awkwardly long the silence has stretched until Marie coughs in an utter failure to sound casual and starts speaking again. Her voice is even higher now, taut with frantic discomfort.

"Are you and Kami dating, then?"

The weapon's head is so full of Stein that is very hard to bring himself back to a place where he can adequately process Marie's question. She keeps talking when he doesn't respond right away, apology coming strong into her tone.

"Sorry if I'm being pushy. I didn't - you just looked like you were - she seemed really casual and I hadn't heard anything about it from Stein. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, I'm just - kind of trying to make conversation." An awkward laugh that is too short and too sharp-edged to do anything but ratchet the tension higher. "Sorry. Again. I'm -" Spirit looks up at her and she is shaking her head and staring at her hands. "Sorry."

He has to laugh. There's nothing else he can do when confronted with that much anxiety in someone else. He starts speaking as soon as he can control his voice, talking over her continued mumbled apologies until she trails off to silence.

"No. I mean, no, don't feel sorry. Yes. Well. Uh." He looks away and laughs again, this time at himself. "I don't know? That sounds really dumb. Sorry. We've been talking a lot? And went out for coffee once, but - well, that wasn't really successful. This is, uh - new."

"Oh." Marie bites her lip. "Sorry I asked. It looked pretty - confirmed."

"Yeah, it did, didn't it?" Spirit can't seem to stop punctuating with nervous laughter. "I don't know. Probably. Let's just say close enough?"

"Well. Congratulations." The smile Marie gives him is warm and genuine. Spirit is startled to realize how long it's been since he just talked to someone who isn't Kami or Stein, and surprised to find how easy it is to smile back.

"So." Marie looks away. She is still smiling but it is starting to look slightly forced, and although her voice is lower in range it sounds oddly mechanical with deliberate casualness. "Is Stein seeing anyone? Do you guys ever go out together?"

The second half, accompanied by a breathless laugh, is so hard on the heels of the first that Spirit is too confused for a moment to understand the import of her question. He answers both at once. "No. Yeah. No, definitely not."

"I guess it'd be hard with Kami and Stein not getting along."

"Yeah. Well, yeah, but Stein's not seeing anyone either. I mean we went out once with Kami's partner, but that..."

The awareness of what Marie is really saying trickles into the back of Spirit's consciousness until it reaches the top of his brain, at which point it entirely eclipses the tail end of his half-formed sentence. He manages to keep his mouth shut this time, which is good, because he's pretty sure blurting "Oh my god, you *like* Stein," would be insulting and embarrassing and impolite all at the same time. The silence that has invaded his speech is something of a tell, but Marie is looking out the window instead of at him and there is a hint of a smile on her face, and that expression is definitely not for Spirit and he's sure she isn't listening to him at all anymore.

The introspective pleasure on the other weapon's face and the ache of hurt feelings in Spirit's chest rotate and click together into an explanation that he would never have considered with either individually. The realization is like cold water as all his skin prickles with a chill of what is undeniably horror, although Spirit can't explain this reaction any more than he can his earlier sense of betrayal. All he knows is that Stein visiting Marie without telling him, Marie's clear interest in his meister, and the possibility that Stein might reciprocate her feelings are all leaving him feeling like the world has turned on him and gravity doesn't work anymore. His stomach is falling endlessly and he feels like he might be sick. It takes a monumental force of will to make himself smile, even though he knows the expression isn't making it to his eyes.

"I'm pretty sure you're the only person Stein's been seeing regularly. Other than me, of course." He is trying to sound dismissive of his own role in the meister's life, a little self-deprecating while reassuring Marie that she doesn't have any competition to worry about, but the pain is spreading through him like a cancer and it is hard to keep self-pity out of his tone.

The way Marie's face lights up is almost worth it. Spirit tries very hard to tell himself that making someone else happy is more important than his own offended feelings. He almost succeeds in convincing himself.


	38. Echoes

It is several days before Spirit is released from the infirmary to their new home. Stein *does* visit him at the academy for several hours a day, but he is constantly dreading Kami's reappearance, and Marie's presence is becoming an unavoidable distraction. Her continued stay means that Stein can't get Spirit alone, although what exactly he would do he's not sure. She also apparently volunteered that he has been visiting her, and now when Spirit looks at him his eyes are sad and he bites his lip when he forgets to keep track of his mouth. Stein doesn't know what Marie said to cause this or if it was her fault at all, but he can't stand to see Spirit's expression and not be able to do something about it.

Stein can't wait for his partner to come back, and even when he spends most of the daylight at the academy the nurse inevitably shows him the door well before he has anything else to do with himself. Their new home, an industrial laboratory at the edge of the city, is cavernous, too large for two inhabitants and agoraphobic for one, and the space feels hollow and cold without Spirit in it. All of the weapon's things were moved along with Stein's, but since the older boy hasn't been back to unpack them yet most of his room is covered in boxes that feel like dust and make it impossible for Stein to forget Kami's threat.

First he tries waiting it out. The emptiness of the house doesn't frighten him, and the loneliness is tolerable if not something he has experienced before, but in the quiet his mind keeps replaying memories he doesn't want to repeat. Unpacking everything he owns takes some time but not as much as it should. Without anything to fill the time, the nights alone become a burden to be defeated, but Stein doesn't have any sort of offense and doesn't know how he would go about finding one.

Sleep is the obvious answer, but his bed is unfamiliar with disuse when he tries to rest, and the drowsiness of relaxation opens up those same lurking memories as soon as he closes his eyes. It isn't until he wanders the house that the obvious problem - Spirit's absence - presents itself.

Even with the unpleasant connotations of moving boxes, Spirit's room feels warmer, like the boxes themselves carry a little of the weapon's self forward into this room he has never been in. Stein opens up all the boxes, pulls out most of their contents in an attempt to track down the source of that self, but in his hands the objects and clothes become just things, as if by touching them he is overwriting any of Spirit that might have clung to them before.

The real difference is the bed. Spirit packed up his other possessions, but the bed was moved more or less exactly as it had been, and although the space around it is now far larger than it was the mattress is still just the same. The weapon's more predictable sleep cycle has pressed a permanent indentation into the far edge of the bed; when Stein lines himself up with it he can tell that Spirit is a couple inches shorter than he, that he has narrower hips but broader shoulders, and that Spirit tucks his head against the bottom edge of the pillow rather than the center. The pillowcase smells like Spirit's hair. The bed feels almost alive, like there is some ghost of the weapon clinging to the mattress and blankets. Stein doesn't realize he's fallen asleep and is dreaming until he wakes to painful daylight coming in through the narrow window.

After that he spends his time either in the infirmary with his weapon or sleeping away the intervening hours in the other boy's bed. Things are easier then, quieter in the space of his own brain; he can trample down the tangle of guilt and fear when he has Spirit right in front of him, and with the lingering residue of Spirit around him he can drop into the oblivion of sleep as an escape.

By the time Spirit is released, Stein is sure he will never need sleep again and is thoroughly tired of the infirmary visiting hours. Even the masochistic pain of watching Spirit limp out to their new home doesn't eclipse the satisfaction of having the older boy *present* in the space, filling up the rooms with his breath and his warmth and all the hundreds of tiny proofs of his existence. Stein wants Spirit to spread out, to wander through the too-large space and linger in each location, as if it were possible to fill a house with the evidence of inhabitants through force of will rather than the slow accumulation of time. But Spirit is not yet up to moving either easily or quickly, and when they arrive at the entrance to the laboratory he heads straight for his new bedroom without bothering to familiarize himself with the rest of the house. He pauses at the doorway to take in the utter destruction of the space, leaning heavily on the frame because Stein can't bear the contact that would follow an offer of physical support from him.

"Did you -" Spirit starts, and for the first time in his life Stein's mouth becomes infected with nerves and he starts to speak before the weapon can finish the question.

"I was trying to unpack." He slows down his speech deliberately, uncurls the words into flatness in his mouth before setting them loose. "I thought I'd do some of the work for you before you got back, save you some of the effort. It turns out I don't actually know where any of your things go." The lies sound obvious to him, absurdly out of character for him and stiff with fear of discovery, but Spirit just laughs in the new shallow way he does to avoid hurting his cracked ribs.

"I don't know why you would. I appreciate the thought though." He reaches towards Stein with his free hand. The meister can feel his back stiffen in anticipation of the contact, but the touch stops short of his coat and Spirit pulls his hand back. "Sorry."

Stein wants to tell him that he doesn't need to apologize, that there is nothing that the meister wants more right now than the excuse of connection initiated by his injured partner, but if he were able to say what he wanted he wouldn't be where he is now. Instead he stays where he is, hands in his pockets and body still achingly tense with thwarted desire, while Spirit totters to the bed and carefully sets himself down.

"It's good to be back," the older boy offers as he lowers himself sideways to the mattress. He turns his head downward into the pillow for a moment, inhales hard against the fabric, tips his head back up and smiles. "Everything smells like home."

The happiness on Spirit's face and the distance between their bodies is too much. Stein backs out of the room, turns and almost runs down the hallway until he is out of the weapon's range of view.

When he comes back an hour later, Spirit is curled into the same loose curve Stein has been fitting himself into for a week, hugging his pillow to his face and breathing into it with a truly beatific expression for someone whose face is still bruised blue and purple. Stein eases the door shut behind him, lowers himself to the floor, and pulls his knees up in front of him so he can hug them to his chest.

This is not the way it was supposed to be. Stein understands that Spirit needs rest and that the travel from the academy was hard on him, but the rest of the space is as lonely and empty as it was before the weapon arrived, and now that he has reclaimed his own bed there is nowhere for Stein to wrap himself in the remnants of his partner's presence. Moving out of the infirmary and away from the attendant audience was supposed to make things *better*, supposed to allow for the closeness that Stein has been aching for, but Spirit has brought all the sadness in his eyes home with him and Stein has no idea how to step over the awkwardness. His skin feels cold and his body is tingling with itchy adrenaline, and he wants to do something but can't think of what it should be. All he knows is that the distance between Spirit and himself is becoming unbearable, that having the weapon so close now makes it impossible to miss what has changed in the last weeks, and that he is forgetting how to think on his own.

Spirit's sleeping warmth was enough for comfort when he first came into the room, but the chill in Stein's bones is leeching all the heat out of the hands are starting to shake, and he will never be able to carry out his plans if he can't regain control over his own body. Stein pushes himself to his feet and steps towards Spirit with carefully silent deliberation as he retrieves the needle of anesthetic from his pocket.

There is a moment of hesitation like a pause just before jumping off a cliff. There will be no coming back from this. This is premeditated and thoroughly deliberate and Stein is as sure as he ever is about others' feelings that Spirit will never forgive him for this. He almosts leaves. He almost says Spirit's name. He almost doesn't hear Kami's words - "He has other options" - shiver through his memory.

He turns Spirit's flushed arm wrist-up with icy fingers and slides the needle carefully into the deep veins at the weapon's elbow.

The hardest part is moving Spirit once the anesthetic takes effect. It only takes a few minutes; Stein waits until the older boy's body goes heavy with the limpness of true unconsciousness before he tries to pick him up. He is able to lift the weapon, but only just barely; the dead weight of another body is much harder to handle than he expected, and the radiant heat of Spirit's skin keeps pulling Stein's mind away from the task at hand. Once Stein gets Spirit down the hallway to the room he has prepared, he has to deal with getting the weapon's shirt off as well, but that is relatively easy to manage, although the prospect of maneuvering it back on is not appealing.

Then there's just Spirit unconscious in front of him. There is a rising tide of nausea in Stein's stomach; this is totally different than the first time, when everything was fast and hot and there wasn't enough time to process what he was doing until it was done. This is slow and cold and planned and calculated, and he knows with absolute certainty that this is *not* *normal*, that this is a betrayal of Spirit's trust on a totally new level. But he's too far gone now, he's fully commited at this point, and Kami's words are ringing in his ears and his desire to *own* Spirit and to *be* Spirit is flooding into his veins and he couldn't stop now if he wanted to.

The white light overhead is less forgiving than the starlight but better suited to Stein's mood tonight, and when the scalpel breaks Spirit's bruised skin the red shows up properly crimson instead of nearly black. Stein drags his fingers through it to paint a scarlet stripe across Spirit's flushed skin. This isn't what he intended but with the color in front of him he can't keep his hands clear. When he moves to continue the stain on his fingertips transfers to the scalpel in his hands and sticks there too, like Spirit's mortality is spreading out to infect the environment and the objects in Stein's hands and Stein himself. The meister closes his eyes, and even in the taunting darkness behind his lids Kami's voice has gone silent.

He pushes harder on the next pass.


	39. Headache

Spirit wakes up with an agonizing headache. The press against his temples is so bad that he can barely see and it drowns out the more restrained groan of bruises and aching muscles from the rest of his body. His mouth feels like he hasn't tasted liquid in a week, and once he manages to push himself into a seated position his head is spinning so badly he can't see straight.

As soon as he leaves the space of his unfamiliar new bedroom, he is hopelessly lost. The idea of being truly and properly lost within an enclosed space would be funny if there were any room left for amusement in his head, but there's nothing but horrible, uncontrolled motion and bursts of additional pain when he turns his head. He wonders if this is what being hungover feels like.

Stein finds him on the floor of a hallway somewhere. Spirit gave up on trying to walk and on trying to find his meister in the maze of an unknown layout, and the motion of his feet kept jostling his head in bursts of pain. Sitting still isn't much better, but he can close his eyes and rest his head against the wall and that at least limits the headache to a steady pounding instead of waves of pain.

"Spirit?"

Spirit tries to coax some sort of sound from his impossibly dry mouth. "Hi." It comes out as a croak but at least the sound comes out at all.

"What's wrong?" Stein's words are coming from very far away. It is difficult to hold the meaning in his head long enough for Spirit to form a reply.

"Headache." He shakes his head and grimaces and regrets the movement as soon as he does. "Feel terrible."

There is a faint increase of pressure against his forehead, fingers gripping his wrist, a hand against the pulse in his throat.

"Wait here." The contact vanishes and Spirit slides back into an eternity of pain.

He is beginning to delude himself it is getting better when the sound of footsteps echoing down the hallway warns of Stein's return. The weapon opens his eyes, carefully not moving his head, as Stein kneels in front of him and takes his arm to push his sleeve up.

"What are you doing?" Spirit tries to ask, but Stein isn't looking at his face and is ignoring his voice. The pain of the needle breaking his skin is sharp but quick; Spirit almost immediately loses track of it beneath the more immediate and crushing ache in his head.

After some lost minutes, the world begins to resolve into clarity again. The dizziness recedes, so slowly that at first Spirit isn't sure it's happening at all, but then the pain fades to a tolerable level as well and he regains his sense of time. As his vision returns to the forefront of his brain, he blinks Stein into resolution. The meister is still kneeling in front of him; the younger boy has his arms crossed in front of him protectively but is leaning forward until he is right at the edge of Spirit's personal space.

Spirit pulls a smile onto his face. "Thanks." Movement still seems excessively risky so he stays where he is and lets the relief settle into him. "What did you give me?"

"Painkillers." Stein doesn't move, doesn't even blink. "Feeling better?"

"Yes, actually." Spirit tries turning his head, and when that goes well he shifts to push himself to his feet. Stein leans back and stands in front of him, edging back to press himself against the other wall of the hall while Spirit regains his balance, as if an excess of distance now will make up for the unusual closeness of a moment before. The hall is inordinately wide, designed to handle the width of a gurney or a wheelchair rather than just the ordinary sizing of a regular house, so with each of them against an opposing wall there are feet of space between them.

"Sorry," Spirit offers into the silent space. He's not sure what he's apologizing for, exactly, but even though the meister has moved away he still hasn't blinked or looked away, and Spirit feels like he's *waiting* for something. The word drops into the quiet and barely leaves a ripple; after a too-long pause Spirit clears his throat and tries again.

"I guess I'll try to take it easy today." Still no response. "Will you - be around? Do you have any plans?"

Stein is actually opening his mouth to speak now, but Spirit's nervousness and his poorly-contained suspicions talk over the reply he is looking for. "Will you be visiting Marie?"

Stein shuts his mouth and stares at Spirit blankly. His expression suggests that the words are in a foreign language that he has never heard before. Spirit flushes red and tries valiantly to overwrite what he has just said.

"I was planning on going out myself, but I think exploring this place might be a better idea in case I lose it again." Stein is still looking at Spirit like the weapon's gone entirely insane, and Spirit can feel his blush go hotter across his cheekbones. "And I think I'll get lost if I don't familiarize myself with it. I had no idea a building could be this big." He attempts a laugh but that *still* doesn't get a reaction. "Have you been entirely at loose ends on your own? Or do you like the space? Is this what you wanted? I mean if you wanted room to..." The verb escapes him for a moment but he soldiers onward. "...Experiment I guess you have it now?" He doesn't mean for every sentence to come out a question but his vocal chords are running away with him and his control over his speech slipping away with every second Stein fails to react. "I'm sure I'll get used to it?" He reins himself in with an enormous force of will, aided by dragging his eyes away from the confusion on the meister's face. "Yes. Okay. I'm going to go find the living room."

He walks away without looking back to see if the other boy's expression has changed. He feels jittery, like all the nerves in his skin are firing for no particular reason and entirely at random, and the longer he stands with the impossible gap of the hallway between him and Stein the longer he feels like he is on trial for something he doesn't know about and can't defend himself against. Everything is *wrong*. The rooms are too big and too cold, Stein's expressions are now just as confusing as his distance ever was, Spirit's head is still dully throbbing, and his body feels achy and itchy and unpleasant. Worst of all, the weapon doesn't know if the change is even in his surroundings or if it's something wrong with him, if maybe his grasp on Stein's particular variety of self-expression has slipped sideways and all the uncomfortable tension is just in his imagination.

With his thoughts to distract him it takes a very long time for him to identify the dull sound as external to his own head, and longer still to recognize it as a knock on the front door. He considers letting it go, waiting until whoever it is has left, but politeness wins out over his desire for isolation and he begins the search for the front door. Stein beats him to it, but only just; Spirit is coming down the hallway as the meister opens the door and the grey of the walls floods with the warmth of golden sunlight.

It is Kami, of course. Spirit can't explain why he should be so surprised; upon reflection he doesn't know who else would come by unannounced and be so sure of welcome. Her expression, at least, is easy to read - she leans back slightly when Stein opens the door, then sees Spirit over the meister's shoulder and her face *glows* with pleasure.

"Hi there," she says to both of them, her eyes flickering over the younger boy in token inclusion before landing back on Spirit's face. "I thought I'd bring you a housewarming gift, but then that seemed like a kind of silly excuse and besides I didn't know what to bring so I just came by myself instead."

"That's fine," is what Spirit wants to say, but instead he's just smiling and half-waving before he controls his hand, and Stein looks back at him and steps out of the doorway to let Kami through. With the light at his back washing out the dimmer illumination , Spirit can't see Stein's face, just the motion of his body. Kami glances at the meister and half-smiles in what looks a little like an apology, though Spirit has no idea why she has to be sorry for. It's the friendliest interaction Spirit has seen her offer the younger boy since their failure of a coffee trip.

Stein shuts the door behind Kami after she steps forward into the hall. In the removal of daylight Spirit is briefly blinded, and once he's blinked the sunspots from his eyes Kami is right in front of him and smiling and reaching out to touch his face with her fingertips. Her skin is sun-warm in the cool of the lab. Stein is watching them both, but Spirit is distracted and Stein is just leaning against the door with his hands in his pockets, and when Kami leans in to brush her lips against his his focus entirely evaporates into nothing but pleasure.


	40. Solution

The weeks that Stein has to wait for Spirit to fully heal seem impossibly long. The weapon's presence is ultimately an improvement over the oppressive weight of an empty building, but it comes with the steep cost of Kami's regular visits. Stein feels like his space is being invaded by the girl, like the air she breathes is filling up the loneliness that he wants Spirit to occupy, until he is unwillingly sharing his life with her as well as with the weapon. He takes to shutting all the doors that he can find when she is over, as if the weight of a door can keep her out of the space itself, keep her contained to the rooms she unknowingly infects. If Spirit notices that the house literally shuts itself when Kami is over and opens back up for him the moment she leaves, he doesn't say anything about it to Stein. Of course, he's not saying a whole lot to Stein to begin with. Spirit has always been the talkative half of their partnership; Stein long ago learned to appreciate the white-noise sound of Spirit's voice without bothering too much with what the weapon was saying. Now the words come slow and hard and Spirit will barely look at him, and everything the older boy says and more of what he doesn't is freighted with meaning that Stein doesn't have the experience to understand yet.

Then there's the fact that every time Kami is over she is touching Spirit, casually brushing her fingers over his or pressing her lips against his or resting her leg alongside his. Stein can't let himself think about this too much. When she starts doing this, which is almost as soon as she gets in the door, he retreats to his room and shuts the door and tries very hard to avoid the subject entirely in his own mind. The slow burn of jealousy is bad enough on its own, but he would stay if it were just that. The possibility that Spirit might *respond* to this casual contact that Stein can't replicate himself and doesn't dare try is terrifying, and the meister can't stand to see what he suspects is there. It is easier to rest his head on his desk and stare at his ever-growing collection of vials and textbooks and daydream about the next time he will stamp Spirit as his own.

Given the slow torture that Spirit's recovery has produced, even the lurking pressure of Resonance isn't enough to dampen Stein's anxious anticipation of their next assignment. When it finally comes, he is almost happy for the first time since Spirit was released from the infirmary.

In the past Spirit has been chatty just before assignments. Stein can track the weapon's building tension by how much he talks; the older boy rises into nearly unintelligible monologue as the day wears on to its close and their departure looms. Today he is silent as they prepare to leave, although his stress is just as visible - Stein just has to look to the hunch of his shoulders and the tightness of his lips instead of the ramble of his voice. The quiet is oppressive for the first time Stein has ever known, weighing so heavily on his shoulders that *he* is ultimately the one to shatter it, just for the sake of lessening the pressure.

"Are you going to be alright?" He wants to touch Spirit, rest his hand casually against the other boy's arm or shoulder in imitation of Kami, but he can't make himself move and the easy action would turn clumsy with significance in his veins.

Spirit glances at him. Stein can't explain why the weapon looks sad all the time now but he does, and the misery is in his eyes as always. "I think so."

"Are you sure?" Stein's not trying to push the subject, but Spirit is behaving so unusually and he himself feels and has been feeling so off-balance that he is losing his grasp on what is ordinary.

"Yes," Spirit responds automatically. Then he stops and laughs. There is no amusement in the sound at all. He covers his eyes with his hand for a moment and Stein can see his shoulders straighten and his back unbend. When he moves his hand the ever-present hurt in his face is gone and he is very nearly smiling.

"Yes." This time there is the firmness of surety in the word. "I'll be alright. You can count on me."

Stein wants to smile in echo of the weapon's self-imposed expression, but he can't remember how to force his face into the correct position. Instead he shoves his hands into his pockets and says, "I know I can."

They don't speak again after leaving the lab, but the silence is less deafeningly loaded and Stein feels like he can at least attempt to breathe normally. The release of tension is particularly crucial because he has not yet sorted out how he is going to deal with the inherent bleed-over that Resonance causes. The weeks that it has taken Spirit to recover have given him plenty of time to reflect on his initial poorly-designed plan but no real idea how to explain away the emotional onslaught that Spirit is about to experience from him. He is hoping the other boy won't say anything about it at all, but there is absolutely no way the weapon will fail to notice *something*, and the odds of him putting the pieces together are terrifyingly high by Stein's estimation. The fear this idea generates is irrational - Stein doesn't even know why Spirit knowing how he feels would be so bad - but the meister is surprised to discover that *knowing* something is irrational is no defense against continuing to *feel* it.

He is still chasing his thoughts when there is a sound to his left. Spirit reacts as quickly as he does; the both lift their heads and turn in perfect synchronization, and pleasure in the connection of the motion distracts the meister long enough that he can pull himself back into focus.

Stein reaches towards the older boy without looking away from the source of the sound. "Spirit." The name is very soft but Spirit still catches it. There is such perfect silence that Stein can hear the tiny gust of air caused by the air displaced by replacing of a body with a weapon, and his focus is so intent that he has a moment to regret not having more of a plan than he does before he closes his fingers around the scythe's handle.

*Stein?* The meister is almost certain Spirit didn't mean to say anything, but the weapon's inability to control his physical expression has ramifications for his mental control as well, and in this form the almost-question is audible before Spirit has fully committed to it. Stein is entirely certain that the plea in Spirit's tone is unintentional, but it sends a prickle of pleasure that Spirit can undoubtedly feel up his spine.

*Spirit.* The meister keeps his mouth shut and his focus on the shadow that is just starting to detach itself from its surroundings, but there is an affection in his mental tone that he is no longer able to separate from his partner's name.

That is relief in Spirit's head, although he doesn't put words to it, and that is their target loping towards them with ever-increasing speed. Stein braces himself at it approaches, and as he ducks under its initial test strike the answer to his problems unfolds itself from the back of his mind into the haze of adrenaline that floods his body.

Stein shuts his eyes for a moment. In the darkness behind his eyelids his body goes into overdrive, shrieking that he needs to *see*, that he needs to watch the enemy so he can dodge its attacks. He crushes the animal panic, waits until his body resigns itself to the cold, familiar removal of the scientist before he opens his eyes.

By then the next attack is already on top of him. He expected that, goes limp and lets the blow take him spinning sideways and off-balance. Spirit yells in shock but that's irrelevant information that can be noted and ignored. More importantly, the pain is *hot*, licking through his veins like fire and lighting up all his senses with the desire for *vengence*. Stein stumbles to his feet, dragging himself back to vertical with the aid of the scythe in his hands, and when he turns to stare down the enemy Spirit's concern fades into silence.

There is no fear left in him. He isn't afraid of the enormous creature in front of him. He isn't afraid of the selfish rage inside of him. He isn't even afraid of the emotions of his weapon that are currently seeping into his soul. Whatever in his head that silenced his partner is all over his face as well, because the enemy slows and halts in front of him, hesitant to approach. He is smiling, he realizes, showing all of his teeth in something that has as much promise of pain as personal pleasure in it.

*Now.* That is a command, and in spite of the flicker of fear he feels from Spirit the weapon obeys and capitulates to the Resonance. As soon as Stein feels Spirit give in, he does what he hasn't done since their confrontation in the forest years before and lets the vicious pleasure of destruction roar through him wholly unchecked. It hits the seething desire he has for his partner and crashes through it until the two are indistinguishable, until there is nothing in Stein and never has been anything in him but raging passion and the ache to destroy.

Spirit's flinching terror is the last thing Stein is properly aware of for a long time.


	41. Resonance

If Spirit were alone in his own head, he would be sobbing.

He has felt Stein's unhinged violence before, or thought he had. There is always a point during a fight when their Resonance tips over from cool detachment into burning rage, and Spirit has grown accustomed to the vertiginous loss of self that it engenders. At least when they break apart he is always himself, only slightly disoriented and aware of a fast-fading memory of emotions he has never felt within the space of his own mind.

This is different, utterly and agonizingly different. In the past the fire of Stein's usually-repressed destruction has been facing outward, boiling out of the meister through Spirit but not aimed at him, not affecting him as anything other than a conduit to amplify the efficacy of the sensation. This time the sensation itself is different, hotter and more pained, and it's curling into eddies in Spirit's head and leaving grooves in his memory that he is certain he will not be able to erase with the conclusion of the fight.

With the current interlacing of his self with Stein's interiority, it is difficult to separate the object of the meister's flaring emotions. They *could* be brutually turned inward, a self-destructive mantra tearing the meister apart for a cause Spirit doesn't understand. The weapon tries to tell himself this, tries to tell himself that this has nothing to do with him, but the animal part of him *knows* they are entirely focused on Spirit himself and is reacting accordingly even though it can't explain the reason. Their intensity explains the oddities in the meister's behavior, the strangely poignant distance he has been exhibiting for weeks now, the weight of the silence he has been wrapping around himself. Even so Spirit isn't entirely sure *what* Stein is feeling, beyond the blistering strength of it. He's never felt anything like this himself; it feels like it's searing his mind, like his skin ought to be flaking and shredding under the onslaught if he had skin at the moment and if Stein's mind could translate into physical damage. Under the agonizing effort of maintaining his mental grip on himself, Spirit is distantly but deeply impressed that Stein has been standing, speaking, interacting in anything like a normal fashion with this in his head. More immediately, however, is the sure sense that he cannot stand this onslaught for long, that if he slips for a moment Spirit Albarn will be gone, there will be nothing left of him but the hollowed-out container for Stein's overflowing emotions.

Focused as he is, Spirit is not nearly as useful as a weapon as he generally manages. Out of the periphery of his attention, he can tell that Stein is apparently entire unaware of this fact, indeed that Stein's own self-consciousness is gone for the moment. There is no voice in his head. There is no calm review of the situation, no rational decision of attack/defend/parry/shift. There is only the blaze of unleashed... something, something like rage and desire and hatred and love and violence that has taken over the meister's body and Spirit himself and is attacking as a single deadly unit. There is blood *everywhere*, coating Spirit's weapon form like syrup, splashing against the incongruous white of Stein's coat, staining the ground around them, and usually the fight is over by now but Stein's precision is gone along with his rationality. There is a flicker of amused pleasure somewhere amid the roiling sea of lust and hurt and for a moment Spirit is reminded unavoidably of a cat's casual cruelty while hunting before the rage takes him under again.

It is impossible for him to tell how long it takes before Stein retreats from his mind and wraps up his emotions into himself again. Usually this process is smooth, a mutual extrication. Tonight Stein just drops him, lets the scythe in his hands tumble to the ground, and the moment his skin breaks contact with the weapon Spirit's head is blessedly his own again.

He changes back immediately, and for the first time in his life as a weapon his rebellious stomach takes second place to the turmoil in his head. The blood in his hair, across his face, dug deep into his fingernails, are all secondary; the taste and smell of the impressive spray of gore around them are awful but far more ordinary, far easier to process, than the ground-in impressions in Spirit's head. He huddles around himself, locking his arms around his knees and pressing his face against the blood-damp cloth covering his legs so he can block out at least the sight of his surroundings and take stock of his mental status in the blinding light of illumination granted by this Resonance.

This is not normal. Spirit has felt Stein near the edge before, has seen the edge of the other boy's raw pleasure in destruction. He would recognize that. If it were only the madness he long ago learned to turn away from he would shut his eyes and carry on. This is something else, something new and terrifying, and he almost laughs as the younger boy's unwillingness to Resonate during their last battle recasts itself as a self-defensive attempt to protect the weapon from exactly this realization.

Stein *wants* him. Spirit has wanted things, objects, people before. Recently more than before he has felt the almost pleasant ache of repressed desire almost all the time he is around Kami, but even before that he has known the prickle of jittery hope that his meister will grant him the fleeting and rare physical contact that feels like a caress no matter how minor the connection. Spirit has never in his life imagined that desire could be as brutal as what Stein feels for him. The emotion is almost unrecognizable, tangled together with hatred and more hurt than Spirit thought Stein capable of feeling and that same ever-present destructive impulse flared into hot focus. If the feeling were less violent, less agonizing, Spirit would identify it as love or at least lust. As it is he cannot distinguish it from the urge that created the bloody panorama around him, and he is not sure if the meister wants to fuck him or kill him or both or if there's even a difference in Stein's mind.

He is shaking, he realizes, shot through with adrenaline that is demanding fight or flight and a body that is too terrified to move. When he tightens his grip around his huddled body it only makes the trembling worse, so he gives up on condensing himself into calm and tries to breathe past it instead. He feels raw and emptied out by the lingering memory of emotions so much stronger than any he has ever felt, and the idea of going back with his partner, of existing around and talking to and sleeping under the same roof as Stein while the meister *burns* with this undefined desire to *act* on or against Spirit in some undefined way is horrifying and as impossible in Spirit's head as the idea of flying.

Spirit doesn't hear Stein say his name either time the meister speaks to him. Adrift as he is he doesn't register any external sound at all, doesn't hear the tinge of concern in the meister's voice or the sound of steps coming up behind him. When Stein touches the back of his neck, Spirit flinches violently away as if the touch were an electric shock jolting through his veins.

The meister freezes. Spirit isn't looking at him, but the younger boy's abrupt stillness is so absolute that the absence of his breathing leaves a void in the air that Spirit can hear, and the shock of that silence brings an apology to Spirit's lips, brings the weapon twisting around as politeness and empathetic apology briefly override his sense of self-preservation and mental trauma.

"I'm sorry," he starts to say. There should be an explanation after that, a hand-waving of the cringe that Spirit is wishing already he could take back, but he doesn't have one so his sentence just trails off into the empty air. In the pause Spirit looks up at Stein's face.

The other boy is still exactly as he was when he made contact, hand still outstretched, fingers carefully extended in a way that speaks volumes about his hesitance in the first place. In the space behind his glasses his eyes are wide with hurt and fear. There is so much terror in the usually coldly calm expression that the empathetic part of Spirit responds to soothe away the horrified hurt in the meister's face before his panicked rationality can kick in.

"I am *so* sorry," he hears himself saying, and he is reaching out himself to clasp both hands around the younger boy's extended one and pull him forward. Stein stumbles and more than half-falls onto Spirit, and then Spirit is wrapping his arms around the older boy and awkwardly hugging him and the back of his head is shrieking with survival instinct but his own memories are putting up a fight now, and they insist that Stein has done *nothing*, has been holding whatever he feels at bay on his own all this time, that Spirit can *trust* the meister to keep himself in check. But keeping him in check is *your* job, his fear wails, and Yes, but I've trusted him before, his loyalty insists, and even though his fright is still crying out the weight of past trust and loyalty and belief in his partner is crushing it into resigned silence, and Stein feels so *normal* and *human* in Spirit's arms that it is hard to believe the horror of minutes before is still raging in his soul.

Spirit maintains his hold on his partner until his fright has bled off enough that his usual reaction to the scene around him has space to bubble up into his throat. Stein's shoulders stay stiff and oddly hunched from his original unbalanced topple forward, but even that is normal in its way and comforting as well. Spirit's mind hisses that he is avoiding the subject, that he is pushing aside the problem and that it *will not go away*, but he shoves that away, at least for now. He has become an expert at ignoring the unpleasant facts about his partner; this can be another to be shelved in his brain and forgotten.

He hopes he can manage to ignore the blistered recollection of this Resonance as effectively.


	42. Concern

When Stein steps back into the confines of his right mind, his first reaction is concern. It such a foreign feeling that it takes him a long time to identify it as worry for his partner. The fight itself is extremely hazy, and what he recalls is pure *him*, the rage and desire and pain bleeding out into his muscles and bones so he can express them on something else. The evidence of his success in this is all around him in the darkened earth and the liquid on his hands and face, but he recalls a rush of fear from his partner, just as unfamiliar in his head as concern, and the recollection of their last fight brings him to Spirit's side as soon as the weapon transforms back, reaching out to confirm that the older boy is alive and okay and unharmed before he can consider the reaction that the contact is likely to cause.

Spirit appears to be physically fine, but the instinctive jerk away from Stein's fingers speaks far more to his emotional state than words could and without the intermediary interpretation of Stein's mind to complicate things. The meister's stomach drops at that cringing movement and his skin goes icy with horror. He can't move, he can't even breathe for a moment, as the possibilities of Spirit's reaction to their Resonance tear through his mind. He thought this would be better than last time; guilt has turned out to be an agonizing emotion, aching sharply in his thoughts as he watches Spirit slowly heal from the injuries that Stein *knows*, knows better than Spirit himself does, that he is responsible for. He cannot lose Kami's words, there is too much accuracy in their barbs for him to shake them, and in the last weeks of Spirit's convalescence he has become coldly dedicated to never letting the weapon take such a beating on his behalf again. He hadn't, hasn't, had time to think through Spirit's possible reactions to their Resonance; the possibility that this might push him away when the physical damage didn't never crossed his mind.

The weapon's impromptu hug should help, the contact should be a comfort after the instant rejection of his initial movement, but Stein feels like the warm of Spirit's breath and body is freezing over around the cold horror in his own skin and blood. Even the painfully self-conscious pleasure the weapon's touch usual gives is lost underneath the escalating purr of fear. Stein is frozen within the confines of his own body, unable to appreciate any of the surface warmth of the contact, his awareness recoiling back from Spirit's fright until he can't reach the older boy even if he tried. He is going to leave you, he is going to *leave* you, his mind is chanting, and he cannot stop the words or the resultant echoes no matter what he does.

When Spirit releases him Stein rocks back to sit on the ground. His consciousness is far distant from his body now, taking refuge in the back of his cacophonous mind and trying to focus on tiny pieces of input from his eyes: a rising bruise along Spirit's cheekbone, the irregular pattern of blood sprayed across his own knees, the motion of a strand of the weapon's hair as a breeze catches it. He can't feel his skin, either the pain of injuries he knows he must have or the pressure of the ground under him or the texture of his clothes or the coldness of the air or the stickiness of the blood coating his hands. Spirit is speaking but Stein doesn't hear what he says; the sound of panic in his head, illusory though it may be, demands all of his attention.

His mind is working slowly, struggling to process outside information, but when Spirit stands he manages to push himself to his feet, and when Spirit starts the walk back he is able to drag his feet into a semblance of movement and follow in his wake. His body is still numb, like it belongs to someone else entirely, and he is sure that the awkwardness in his movements would be obvious to himself, but Spirit's back is to him and the weapon has always been near-blind when it comes to deliberately reading body language. It has been a source of amusement to Stein in the past; he has never consciously been grateful to it before.

Spirit keeps talking the whole way back, his voice retaining the too-fast too-high trademarks of stress, but other than the tone itself Stein can't process the words. His head keeps returning to that instinctive retreat from his touch, from the animal terror on Spirit's face, and his mind is telling him that he deserves that reaction, that he is the only one to blame for the destruction of Spirit's easy trust in him. He cannot shake the replaying image; it as as uncontrolled and persistent as his cyclical madness.

Stein thinks he is free when they reach the laboratory. He steps past the weapon to closet himself in the sanctuary of his room. In Spirit's wake he has been lost in his own thoughts, letting the weapon chatter into the silence of the night while his mind revolves with the redundancy of a fever around the events of the night he can recall. But while he correctly recalled Spirit's difficulty at interpreting body language, he has entirely and perhaps deliberately forgotten that the weapon's intuitive empathy is more than enough to compensate.

"Stein." The high, nervous thrill in the weapon's tone is gone. This is soft, low, faintly comforting, the way one might speak to a frightening animal; the words don't matter, only the volume and the emotion.

Stein stops dead. He's not sure he could make himself move away from that tone in Spirit's voice tonight, maybe not ever but especially not when his mind is crying out for the comfort of forgiveness and reassurance. He can't make himself turn, though, so he just lets his stillness indicate his attention rather than facing Spirit for a normal conversation.

There is a very long pause from the weapon while he wait to see if Stein will actually turn after all. After it becomes clear that silence is all he will get, he goes on in that same tone. "Are you...okay?"

There is only a tiny pause before the weapon settles on an adjective, and his choice is so quintessentially *Spirit* that Stein almost laughs in spite of the chill at his core and the blood on his hands. The question is intensely, naively foolish, and they both know it. Stein is fairly certain that he has never been okay a day in his life and that this is the last word to describe him now. He tries to open his mouth to speak, to say "No" or to say "Spirit" or just to laugh at the absurdity. Any one of these options would be enough. Spirit has seen the inside of his head; what he doesn't understand at the surface he parses at an emotional level. All it would take is a capitulation to the question. The weapon may have flinched away but he came back afterward, he reached back out over the distance, and it's not his fault Stein was too lost to feel the comfort intended. Spirit will forgive him. Spirit will forgive him anything. Spirit will forgive him anything and submit to more of the same. For a moment of clarity, Stein is certain that if he asked, if he begged it of Spirit, the weapon would chose him, would stay with him, would leave Kami entirely and be just Stein's, however he asked, however he wanted.

When he takes a breath to speak, the brief clarity crumbles into dust. Doubt and insecurity and the ever-present, ever-growing fear sweep in to fill the empty space, to tell him that he has already gone too far to come clean to Spirit now. The only way out is forward and there is no way forward for them without the honesty that Stein is coldly sure will destroy what remnants of their partnership remain. But there is still an echo of what was, and since the possibility of losing Spirit is impossible to consider the only thing Stein can do is cling to what lingers and not think about what he knows now is coming. His decisions are made for him before he ever considers the problem, predetermined by actions he took days, weeks, months ago. All he can do now is follow the path while hoping desperately and foolishly for a way out that he just hasn't seen yet, a way back to Spirit's warm touch and Spirit's easy smile and Spirit's unthought affection.

He doesn't turn to face the older boy. His control over his expression has been slipping rapidly in the last weeks after their last fight; it is all but gone now, so when he tries to set his face into stillness he may burst into tears instead, and he *cannot* risk that with Spirit, not tonight. His voice is still obedient, has always been easier to force to his will, so after the pressure of misery clears from his throat he carefully forms the lie in his mouth and releases it into the air.

"I'm fine, Spirit."

It *is* a lie, and worse Spirit must know that it is, must know that Stein is deliberately refusing to let him in, but Stein can't bear for the weapon to flinch away from him again and the truth would be just as awful to hear as the Resonance was hard for the weapon to bear. And he can't tell him that *either*, doesn't know how to form the words in his head or his throat and couldn't speak them if he did.

Stein lets the silence hang heavy for a moment before he walks away to lock himself in the retreat of his room, where he can let his emotions have free reign over his body and face and voice.


	43. Listening

Spirit is afraid that he has the wrong apartment. He almost turned around from sheer nerves several times on the way over, and now that he is in front of the door it takes a monumental effort of will to actually knock. After that he is trapped waiting for a response, but the urge to run vanishes, replaced by the cold certainty that he has the wrong number, the wrong building, the wrong *something*.

His mental state makes it startling when Kami opens the door, and he almost doesn't recognize her. It's not that she looks that different - her hair is the same, her features are of course familiar, even her clothes are the same as what she usually wears, but her surroundings look comfortable around her, and the unfamiliarity of those lends her an odd uncanny strangeness.

"Hi Spirit," she says, and then she smiles and *that* is normal, and she steps aside to let him in. It takes all the current willpower Spirit has to make himself step into the foreign space.

It *is* small. Kami was definitely exaggerating about the size but not by as much as the weapon had thought. The kitchen is barely large enough for the fridge and the sink, the dining space and the living area are one and the same, and there is a narrow hallway that Spirit assumes leads to bedrooms.

"Care for the grand tour?" Kami offers, then spreads her hands without waiting for a response. "Behold!" She lets her arms fall and grins at him. "I did warn you. On the bright side Ashe is out so she's left us to ourselves, so we may not *have* to sit on top of each other while we take tea."

Kami's face and tone as she speaks is funny enough that it gets a laugh out of Spirit's tenseness even as his mind hums over the fact that this means they are *alone* *together* for the first time in their entire relationship. It is still a relief when she sets herself in the kitchen square to make tea so Spirit can sit on the couch and quietly panic on his own for a few minutes.

"So how did it go?" Kami asks. Spirit is so lost in the attempt to seem calm when he is exactly the opposite that his mind goes blank with possible context for her question.

"How did what go?"

Kami pauses in filling the teapot with dry tea to give him a look so flat it reminds Spirit of Stein. "You know, the first assignment since you were in the infirmary for *weeks* recovering from your last one." She grins. "Are you so skilled now that you forget fighting demonic monsters within twnety-four hours?"

"Oh. Yes." Spirit laughs but there's not much actual humor in it this time. He looks away from Kami's gaze; it is too hard to try to equivocate when he is looking into her steady green eyes. "No, it was fine."

The girl doesn't speak again. There is the faint click of the lid of the teapot, the metallic whine of a kettle on a burner, and then footsteps. Spirit doesn't look up until Kami's weight sinks in next to him, and when he does she is watching him with a look so *concerned* that his nervousness evaporates.

"What happened?" She looks him up and down. "You *look* alright. Do I need to rush you to the academy infirmary?"

"No, no! I'm fine."

Kami appears entirely unconvinced. "Sure you are, you've just become inexplicably quiet in the last day. If it's not the assignment, what is it?"

Spirit stares at her for a moment. His mind is chasing the memories of last night in an endless loop; the idea of talking to someone, if only to break out of that circle for a minute or two, is extremely tempting. And Kami looks like she's ready to listen to anything, to accept whatever he may have to say, and it would be so *easy* to talk and just let her listen and comfort and advise. But those looping thoughts have been gaining momentum and guilt all night while Spirit tried to sleep, and there is a bizarre sense of betrayal in the idea of talking to Kami. Spirit knows the meisters dislike each other, and that is making a lot more sense after last night, but their mutual distaste means he is *choosing*, choosing every time he enjoys Kami's company or stays home to hover over Stein, and to *tell* Kami about last night feels like the ultimate choice, and he is not ready to make that step.

But the alternative of holding it to himself makes him want to cry, and there is *no one else*. He can't talk to Stein about this, and he *must* talk to someone. Spirit covers his face with both hands and starts to talk.

"Look. This is going to sound really vain and really terrible and just...awful in every respect, okay? But if you stop me I don't think I'll be able to keep going so just listen if you can."

Kami doesn't make a sound, but a hand comes up to rest between Spirit's shoulderblades. The casual comfort of the touch is the best argument Spirit has that Kami is the right person to confide in. He feels like he has been trapped in a bubble of isolation; Kami reaching easily into his space to grant him the reassurance of contact tightens his throat with tangled grief and happiness so he can't even speak for a moment. When he regains control over his emotions and his voice, his eyes are damp behind the cover of his palms.

"I've Resonated with Stein before. Almost every assignment we go on we drop into it. It's a little weird being in someone else's mind, sure, and Stein thinks very differently than I do -" Kami makes a funny choking sound of almost-a-laugh but doesn't say anything intelligible. "- but it's been fine. Two assignments ago he wouldn't Resonate at all, even when we should have, even when things were going really badly. I didn't know *why*, he never told me, but I didn't ask either and maybe I should have but I don't think he would have answered and it doesn't matter now anyway, I guess." The silence from Kami is palpable. Spirit doesn't have to look at her to know how hard she is holding herself back from saying anything at all. Her determined silence makes him smile even though his heart is thundering with the tension of his story.

"So last night we went out and we *did* Resonate." He is talking too fast to stop now, the words tumbling out one on top of another until he's not sure Kami will be able to understand him at all. "And it was *awful*, he's never been like that, and he just - there was blood *everywhere*, it was so much worse than he's ever been before, and I think it's *my* *fault* and I don't know what to *do*."

"Wait, stop stop stop." Kami's hand hasn't moved away, but she's pressing it into him as if to hold him steady. Her voice is calm but Spirit can hear the tension of effort in it and he doesn't dare look at her face. It doesn't seem fair to undermine her efforts at being supportive by seeing the expression she must be wearing.

She goes on. "Spirit. What could you possibly have done to make this *your* fault? You've been nothing but a delight with *everyone* that I've ever seen. Do you have a dark, abusive side that you only show towards your meister?"

She is teasing him. Spirit doesn't want to laugh, doesn't want to let the levity break into his self-deprecation, but the sound bubbles up in his throat anyway and he giggles damply. "Okay, no, and that makes it sound stupid but -"

"No. It doesn't just *sound* stupid, Spirit, it *is* stupid." Kami shifts her hand to stroke his hair. It is strangely maternal and comforting on a deeply instinctual level. It saps her words of any sharpness they might have and leaves only the underlying affection. "I don't know what happened but it couldn't possibly have been your fault."

Her reassurance closes up Spirit's throat again. He tries to breathe without sounding like he's sobbing for a few minutes while Kami's fingers gently untangle the half-formed knots in his hair.

When he speaks again, his voice is still weighted with stress and sadness but the words are easier to get out, the tension in his throat eased by the touch in his hair. "He hates me. Or he wants me. I'm not sure which. It's all tangled up? I don't know. We went out on this fight and he tore the target to pieces, there was blood *everywhere*, and it was all because of *me*, somehow. I know I didn't do anything directly but I was the *cause*, at least in his head, it was all twisted around back to me. I know that sounds *ridiculous*, that sounds *so vain* and I don't *mean* it to but -" He doesn't really have more words, so his sentence just trails off into silence.

There is a pause before Kami speaks. When she does her voice sounds strained and odd in a way Spirit can't place. "That - yeah, that's not ridiculous. That makes a lot of sense, actually."

Spirit looks up from his hands to try to read her expression. She isn't looking at him, staring off into the distance with a strangely guilty look in her eyes.

"Well now I feel kind of awful," she murmurs. Spirit wouldn't be able to understand her if he weren't looking at her face, and he has no idea what she's talking about, but before he asks the teakettle whistles and Kami jumps to her feet to pour the water. When she comes back, her expression has cleared and she is smiling in a way that is reassuring even though it's faintly sad around the edge.

"I'm so sorry," she offers as she sits back down. "I don't even know what to tell you other than that really fucking sucks."

Spirit chokes a laugh. "Yeah, it does. I have no idea what to do."

Kami shrugs. "I don't either. Wish I did, then I could sweep in and save the day for you." The smile she gives him is as soft as the expression in her eyes and suddenly she seems very close and very real. "Don't have much but sympathy though." She spreads her hands to demonstrate her lack of ideas, and Spirit leans over and kisses her.

It is the first time he has initiated contact with her. After years of living with Stein it is hard to remember how to interact normally with other people, but Kami's knee is pressed against his and his shoulders are tingling with the memory of her touch and the space between them seems very small and her mouth is *right there*, and when his lips touch hers he can feel her smile against them.

Kami opens her mouth against his, and that's the point that Spirit loses all track of the rest of his body. It's like the opposite of Resonance; instead of gaining awareness of someone else he loses his grasp on his own periphery, so his world narrows to his mouth and his blood rushing through his veins and the unbelievable *warmth* of Kami's skin and lips and tongue. When her hands slide under the hem of his shirt he gasps into her mouth and his mind drops all of its baggage at the door of physicality.

The tea oversteeps into undrinkable bitterness while they lose themselves in each other's skin and lips and breathing.


	44. Evidence

Spirit is gone for *hours*. Stein knows this because he spends all of them watching the crawl of the clock hands while he waits for the weapon to return. It has been awful with Kami there, in front of him, touching and watching and *wanting* Spirit right in front of him, but it turns out that Stein's abandoned imagination is offering up far more vivid details with the weight of the unknown bearing down upon it. By the time the weapon comes home, Stein is tight-wound with the miserable possibilities and has almost convinced himself that the older boy won't be returning at all.

When the door opens, the meister nearly jumps out of his chair. He manages to exert control over his body, but only just, so he stays still while Spirit wanders his way into the room gone dark with the fading sunlight. The weapon startles when he sees Stein in the shadows, half-skipping backwards before he recognizes the younger boy.

"Stein. What are you doing? Did you decide to give up on lighting entirely?" Spirit doesn't wait for an answer but goes toward the lightswitch while still talking."Sometimes I think without me you would forget anything." The light comes on. As with everything in their new space, there's not enough of it to fill the cavernous room, but it does cast a faintly green illumination over both of them. Stein's eyes have been adjusting to the darkness as the sun sets, and even the minimal increase in light is temporarily blinding. He blinks hard against the brightness while Spirit keeps talking.

"What did you do while I was gone? Any exciting new projects?"

Spirit is unusually chatty, which is to say he is chatty as he used to be before everything between them became weighed down with tension. Stein doesn't know what to say in response, since 'I waited for you to come home' is unlikely to go over well, but he is opening his mouth to say *something* to keep this talkative Spirit going when he blinks away the last of his adjustment and gets a good look at his partner.

The first thing he notices is the weapon's expression, and that is enough all on its own to steal his mental focus. Spirit's eyes are soft and shining in a way Stein hasn't seen in years. His mouth is relaxed and curving with the hint of a smile that the weapon probably doesn't know is there. His cheeks are flushed with warmth or pleasure or both, and his body is hanging in a way that speaks of thorough satisfaction. Stein hasn't had much space in his head for anything other than his own frustrated feelings regarding the weapon, but the image that Spirit is currently presenting is so suggestive that his mind throws up a visual for exactly what Stein could do to evoke such a reaction from his partner, and he can feel his face heat with a blush so dark and so instantaneous that he has no chance at all to hold it back.

The mental image lasts precisely as long as it takes Stein to start breathing again. In the space between one half-gasped inhale and the next his eyes continue to take in the rest of Spirit, and the rest of the picture pours over the warm pleasure in his brain like ice.

Spirit's coat is still on, and what buttons are done up are matched correctly with their pairs, but the top two are left undone so there is a pale triangle of skin showing just under the weapon's throat, and the clothing itself is wrinkled enough that it is clear it hasn't been against the heat of Spirit's skin long. Worse even than the coat and the buttons is along the edge of that triangle, where a bruise is darkening evidence of the imprint of someone else's mouth against Spirit's skin.

It would have taken very little more to push Stein to his feet, to bring his hands to Spirit's collar and his mouth to the other boy's so he could erase the mark of another person on *his* weapon and steal away the languid pleasure in Spirit's eyes for himself. But the slow build of silent frustration has trained him to stay still instead of taking action, and the internal panic of his long wait for Spirit tonight has locked him into indecision, and so he doesn't move and doesn't shift and is just distantly and briefly glad that his second realization has cleared the evidence of his first from his face.

Spirit is waiting for a response, a crease of uncertainty working its way between his eyebrow. "Stein?" There's concern in the word and at any other time that would cause a flicker of desperate pleasure in response, but right now the reaction is too minor to overcome the wail of agonized jealousy in Stein's head so loud it is drowning out his churning thoughts and his mental static and turning him into nothing but a receiver for the feelings. Stein has to look away from the older boy's face, covers his shock-blank face in his hands and tries to wrest control of his mind back from his emotions.

"Stein?" The couch shifts as Spirit sits next to Stein. "Are you okay?"

When Spirit's hand touches Stein's shoulder, the meister wants to jerk away, wants to cringe away from the power of that casual contact before Spirit realizes what he has. The meister wants to rock back into the touch, turn sideways and throw himself onto the other boy and let the violence in his head find expression in teeth and nails against the bruised surface of Spirit's pale skin.

Instead he holds himself perfectly still, stabilizes his voice into utter distance, and says, "Don't touch me." There is no emphasis in the words - they are as cool and monotone and perfectly calm - but *something* in his voice causes Spirit to pull his hand away as if he has been burned, to shift his weight so there is no chance of the two of them accidentally coming into contact. Stein expects the weapon to get up and leave him to his unsociable misery, but Spirit doesn't move further; he stays right where he is while the quiet between them stretches past awkward into comfortable, not moving and not speaking with more self-control than Stein has ever given him credit for. His presence isn't *enough*, on its own hasn't been enough since Kami, but it is as much comfort as Stein can stand right now.

The meister expects Spirit to get up eventually, to go to his room and fall asleep there, but after a long while Spirit's breathing slows and his body shifts slightly next to Stein's, and when the meister eases his eyes open the other boy is half-curled on the couch next to him, eyes shut and limbs limp with exhaustion. His face is entirely relaxed now, both the beautiful satisfaction and the painful tension of earlier gone. He has carefully tipped away from Stein and in on himself, so his arms are wrapped around his chest and his knees are pulled in towards himself, and for a moment the juxtaposition of trust and isolation hits Stein with such force that his throat closes up around appreciation and sadness both.

Then he stands up from the couch, careful not to disturb the sleeping weapon, and lets his feet carry him mechanically to his room and to the anesthetic he has had waiting since Spirit left this afternoon. His mind is weighed down with too many considerations - the mark Kami left on Spirit's collarbone, the unthinking trust Spirit has in Stein, the angry tension in his own body - and they are all tangling together, bleeding into one another until there is no way to judge them but by strength, or at least volume in the cacophony of his own head. In that system, there is never any question of what will win out. Jealousy is shrieking loud and possessiveness is close behind, and he lets them sweep over his thoughts and into his veins. It is they that carry him back out to the main room, it is they that force the needle past Spirit's skin, it is they that press the syringe down until the weapon's natural relaxation turns into forced unconsciousness.

Anger is cramping Stein's muscles by the time he gets Spirit under the white light of the operating room. When he pulls back the cover of the weapon's coat, the marks Kami has left on *his* partner flood him with so much adrenaline that he has to drop to the floor and wait for the rush of fury to pass. They are only a handful: the one high on Spirit's collarbone, one against the curve of the weapon's hip, another just against the scar Stein has left across Spirit's abdomen, but every one comes with an all-too-vivid mental image that pushes Stein's breathing into painful, sobbing irregularity.

The cuts are less smooth than they usually are, not quite as razor-straight as Stein usually aims for. His hands are shaking and he thinks he might be crying, and between the blur of moisture in his vision and the tremble in his muscles Spirit's skin comes apart with less perfect ease than in the past. The blood washes out the bruises Kami left, obscuring her mark with Stein's entirely. He bisects each of them, tracing the blade across the purple until red wells up and overcomes the evidence of his impending loss. He touches his hair without thinking and the strands go dark and sticky with Spirit, he leaves crimson fingerprints over his sleeves and metallic trails across his lips and violent smears on his face when he tries to wipe his eyes clear. He thinks about carving his name into Spirit's skin, a permanent reminder of himself, but even his desire to win this game of possession with Kami can't quite pull his hands into the sweeping curves needed to do so. Instead he sticks with the straight lines and makes up for it by adding far more than he ever has before, not stopping with one or two but coating Spirit's body with long traceries of blood and sets of hash marks that say *he is mine, he is mine, he is mine* better than the obvious affectation of letters ever could.

It takes him a long time before he is calm enough to manage the needle and thread to sew the wounds shut, and when he does so he is certain that there is at least as much of his own salty tears in Spirit now as there is Spirit's blood on his own skin.


	45. Discovery

Spirit wakes up with a headache again. Since his stay in the infirmary, he has started more mornings with a dull ache behind his eyes than otherwise. It is a trivial thing to go to the nurse about, and he suspects it is just be a lingering effect of his original injuries, but the inconvenience is mildly frustrating. At least none of them have been anything like as bad as the first one; they have subsided into an low-level pressure at his temples rather than the blinding agony of the first one, and for that at least Spirit is grateful.

Stein is nowhere to be found, at least on a brief tour of the lab. Spirit has yet to fully acclimate to the new space. He doesn't know where anything is, although he hasn't gotten lost on his way from the front door to his room since that first day; there are far too many rooms for him to identify all of them yet, which means there are any number of places the meister could be that Spirit wouldn't see him. It's a strangely lonely feeling. Spirit didn't realize how much he has come to expect to see Stein each morning, even if the meister doesn't say anything at all, until he leaves the house without doing so and feels oddly off-balance.

Kami's apartment is all the way across the city, nearly three miles away, but the sun is out and the air seems to clear away the leading edge of Spirit's headache, so he takes his time with the walk. When he calls up the memory of yesterday, his smile is so uncontrollable that self-consciousness gets the better of him, so he pushes it away to the back of his mind, but it is there all the same, filling his veins with the tingle of excitement and disbelieving pleasure even under the crush of his growing concern for his meister.

In the golden glow of the sunlight from without and the fizzing heat of excitement from within, even the lingering remnants of his headache can't overcome Spirit's bubbling optimism. The world is full of possibility; there is no reason why everything won't work out for the best. Kami is waiting for him and Stein will be home when he returns and he will *make* the meister talk, they can have it out and clear the air and everything will be the way it was.

Kami answers his knock so fast that he barely has time to hear the sound of his fist against the door, and the smile she gives him is utterly radiant. He can't remember how to speak for a moment, so he contents himself with an answering grin that feels stupidly cheerful but that he can't rein in at all.

"Hi there." She comes up on her toes to kiss him and the tingle in his veins cascades through him like electricity, and now he can't control his mouth or his smile even though it would be easier to kiss her back if he could stop grinning. Kami steps aside to let him come past her and shuts the door behind her.

"So, uh." Spirit is having trouble even *talking* around his irrepressible grin. "How's your partner?" He can't even remember her name, he can't recall his own at the moment; there's just Kami and the sunlight streaming in through the window and the bliss firing his blood.

Kami turns and her grin is distinctly mischievous now, her head tipped down to cast her eyes in the shadow of her hair. "Not here."

The distance between them is very suddenly gone, and Spirit isn't sure where they ended up but his mouth is against Kami's and her hands are snaking under his shirt and smiling should by rights still be a problem but his focus has shifted significantly and everything appears to just be working itself out. His nervous adrenaline has shifted to heat in his blood with no apparent conversion time, and his focus on the edges of his body is fading so his entire consciousness is pooled in the skin that Kami's hands and lips and tongue are touching.

When her hands go suddenly still, for a moment there is just a distant confusion in the back of his thoughts. His heart is racing and his blood is thrumming in his veins and it takes him a long time to even realize that she has stopped, and another moment before he reacts enough to pull back and refocus his vision on her face. Kami's cheeks are flushed, her lips are damp from his mouth, but her eyes are out of focus and her fingers are stalled against the skin of his chest. Even her blank expression doesn't tip Spirit off right away; he is still smiling with the buzz of pleasure in his body when he speaks, and the words are light, almost a laugh.

"What's wrong?"

Kami's gaze refocuses and she brings it up to his face, and that's when he knows something is actually wrong. Cold fear hits him before he can even put a name to it, sinking into his stomach like a weight, an instantaneous reaction to the expression on the meister's face. Her eyes are wide, her mouth has dropped slightly open; her entire face has the awful slackness of proper disbelief except for her eyes, which are screaming sympathy for a hurt he hasn't felt yet.

"What's wrong?" he says again, but his lips are cold with dread now and it is hard to vocalize the sounds.

Kami doesn't look away from his face, but she draws her hands back and starts to unbutton his shirt. Spirit doesn't want to know what she is reacting to; his mind is on pause, his reactions holding their breath until he knows the worst. A part of his brain is still brightly optimistic, murmuring the comfort that it can't be *that* bad, maybe she is teasing him, whatever it is can be fixed.

Then the meister finishes unbuttoning his shirt and looks down, and Spirit doesn't need to look himself because he can see the blood drain her face to utter white.

"What is it?" The words are very distant and he doesn't want an answer, but Kami looks back up to his face and he *has* to look because *nothing* could possibly be worse than the look on her face.

It isn't *worse*, quite, but it is pretty awful. The wounds themselves are not that bad; Spirit is used to the messy tears and broken bones of combat, and in comparison these are strangely clean, straight red lines across his chest and stomach. They look almost like drawings, like someone took a red marker and a ruler to his skin. Visually it's not so bad, but Spirit knows very, very well that these weren't here yesterday, and he's only been one place since he was with Kami the day before. *That* knowledge is trickling into his brain with icy horror, and no matter what he tries to offer as excuse or explanation he *knows*.

Then Kami speaks, and her words manage to make it worse.

"He's been *dissecting* you."

She doesn't say his name. She doesn't need to. Spirit is avoiding it himself, dodging the thought as if it will somehow protect him from the understanding that is rushing through him now.

"Technically I think the term is 'vivisection,'" he hears himself saying with the clear enunciation of total shock. All of his memories are getting overturned with paranoia and his stomach is churning and he is most definitely about to be sick. He bolts to the bathroom and barely makes it in time

Kami is standing in the doorway when he comes up from vomiting, her hands over her mouth and her eyes above them - green, too green, too much like *his* eyes - wide with horror. Tears are trickling down her face and outlining the hands over her mouth and why is he noticing these details, he knows what has to happen, soon, *now*, before the first rush of horrified understanding leaves and he talks himself into an explanation.

"I have to go," his numb lips are saying, and then he is leaving, throwing the door open and striding off down the hallway while he half-buttons his shirt because he can't stand for everyone to see the evidence he has only just discovered, but he can't manage all the buttons with his shaking hands.

He doesn't go back to the lab. He needs to find a *person*, not a place, and he is sure right now in some previously-unused part of his senses that Stein isn't at the building. He can hear footsteps behind him - Kami's, he is certain - but he doesn't slow and she doesn't try to catch him, just keeps pace several feet back. Her presence is a comfort, he realizes as his brain calms slightly. He is fairly certain he should be concerned for his safety, and with Kami in his wake he can let her handle the worrying so he can leave more space in his head for the outrage.

He doesn't think about the hurt that's there too. He will never keep going if he thinks about the hurt.

Stein is climbing a hill on the edge of the city when Spirit catches him. He is heading to the forest and that is all Spirit needs to know; his ultimate purpose is something the weapon's mind shies away from, and it is unimportant at the moment anyway. He must be feeling some of the inexplicable connection burning in Spirit's mind, because he starts to turn well before he can possibly hear Spirit's approach.

At any other time, on any other day, Spirit would consider the flash of emotion on Stein's face as a victory, as a battle won in his incessant war on the meister's composure and corresponding distance. But there is no room in his head for that, so when Stein takes a step backwards in an unprecedented display of fear it barely registers in Spirit's mind. He closes the distance, keeps coming until he is well within Stein's comfort zone, until he is well within his *own*. The years of accumulated knowledge in his head tell him that their proximity will make Stein much more uncomfortable than he, that this is an advantage to him even though the meister's extra height gives him the edge in sheer physical intimidation.

Besides, the expression on Stein's face says that intimidation is the last thing on his mind right now. His body is stiff with what looks like fright, his weight rocked back on his heels like he's going to start running at any moment, and his eyes are startlingly wide with something that appears to be panic behind his glasses. Spirit has only seen the meister look like this once before, when Stein startled back from unexpected physical contact, and then it was so brief that he barely processed the reaction, but the image has been lurking in his memory and that is *exactly* what Stein looks like now.

Spirit opens his mouth but there is simultaneously too much too say and nothing at all to say. For a moment his forward momentum flags and fails while he struggles for language, but then he rallies with the only possible thing he could say at this moment.

"What the FUCK, Stein?"

Stein blinks at the expletive but doesn't move or react otherwise. Now that the initial words are out, though, Spirit is rolling down the steep incline of righteous fury and devastated trust and he is not sure that anything can stop him.

"We are *partners*. I am supposed to be able to trust you. I *did* trust you, I've trusted you for *years*, even when you didn't talk to me, even when you *ignored* me, even when you destroyed things just because you *could*. I trusted you anyway, I thought I was the *exception*, I thought you *cared* about me, and all this time you've been *experimenting* on me?" He bites off the syllables, he is almost spitting every word, and his volume is rising and Stein's eyes are going wider but he can't slow down or regulate his volume at all. "I felt *sorry* for you, I wanted to *help* you. I felt bad for *abandoning* you, I felt *guilty* for caring about anyone else, as if you cared about *me* at all."

Stein licks his lips. The motion screams uncertainty; Spirit almost doesn't recognize the emotion because it is so bizarre to see it on Stein's face. "Spirit -"

"Don't you *dare*." Spirit is not sure he has ever been really, properly angry before, but the emotion is raging through his body now and there is no pulling it back. Part of his mind is cringing in fear, and he is fairly sure he will regret his words and his actions later, but most of him is right there with the fury, screaming into his meister's wide-eyed fear. "I have done *everything* I can to help you. I have been there for you for fucking *years*. I have cared when *no one else did*, and you've been -" He can't say it again, can't meet Stein's gaze even though he knows it's backing down to look away, and when he breaks eye contact he realizes he is crying and doesn't know when he started.

"I have -" Stein starts again. Spirit turns back to him, steps so close that his foot comes between Stein's and that their hips are pressed together, so close that when he angles his head up to look at Stein he can feel the meister's too-fast breathing against his mouth, and he reaches up to grab a handful of Stein's coat and hold him where he is.

"Did you even care *at all*?"

Stein's face is awash in panic and fright, but that slides away at Spirit's words and the weapon can see the meister's face collapse into total, agonized pain. He looks at Spirit like the older boy has just stabbed him, like he is about to cry. He takes in a breath around a sob and as close as he is Spirit can hear the tears in the sound, can see the meister's lip tremble before he speaks.

"Don't TOUCH me." The words are angry but Stein's voice cracks on the second word. He slams the palm of his right hand against the half-exposed skin of Spirit's chest, and even with their awkward proximity there is enough force in the movement to almost push the weapon over. Stein's eyes overflow with tears and his mouth firms into anger and that is all Spirit has time to process before an incredible force jolts through his chest and flings him backward. There is a wave of agonized want and jealousy and pain, devastating pain that might be physical or emotional or both, that crushes through his body and his head, and before understanding can fully form he hits the ground, his head snaps back against the earth, and the protection of unconsciousness sweeps in over the impossible *understanding* forced into his head.


	46. Force

Stein feels Spirit coming.

When he thinks back on this later, he doesn't know how to explain what happened the moment before he turns to face the oncoming weapon. It's like the sensation of someone's eyes on his skin, not something he can quantify but which he feels like something physical anyway. When he sees Spirit's face, the question of how he knew the older boy was approaching becomes entirely secondary to the *fear*.

Fear is a new emotion for Stein. He hasn't started feeling it until very recently, and even then it has been an emotional terror, the anticipated horror of impending loss. This is like the visceral fear that Spirit experiences during a fight but with none of the clinical distance that the Resonance grants to the meister. It is cold and it is crippling; the adrenaline in his veins locks Stein in place the way that it did when he nursed Spirit's fever in Germany, but with the addition of a raw animal terror for his own survival that overtakes his body without his permission.

It is not that Spirit is particularly physically imposing; even as he closes with Stein he lacks the height to loom over the meister, and his musculature tends towards slender rather than brawny, as Stein knows intimately. But there is something in his eyes and in the set of his jaw that Stein has never seen there before. He thought he was missing some crucial component of basic animal instinct. It turns out his instinct had just never met anything bigger than it before.

His newfound fear drags his feet backward in an attempt to run, but he only makes it a step before the desire to freeze stops him cold, and then there is nothing to do but wait for Spirit to reach him.

The weapon steps far, far too close. If this were any other time Stein would be sucking in air like he was drowning, breathing in the heat radiating off the older boy, locking the memory of Spirit's proximity into his mind for future reference, but his heart is racing and he thinks he's probably hyperventilating with terror and there is no space left in him even to appreciate the relative excess of pale skin Spirit's half-done shirt exposes.

And the red cuts across that skin. Understanding clicks in Stein's mind with a sensation he is *sure* must be audible just before Spirit starts talking.

"What the FUCK, Stein?"

The question is rhetorical, which is for the best because Stein is just realizing that he has never really thought through a defense for when Spirit finds out what he has been doing to the weapon. Spirit talks over any response he could make and there is nothing in Stein's head as an excuse, just the sickening horror at the knowledge that this is it, that there is no more running and no more dodging this issue, that they are going to have this argument right *here*, right *now*, and he is not ready. He is not sure that he would *ever* be ready for this, but this is all wrong, too soon and too fast and he is too frightened and Spirit too angry, and the weapon is yelling at him and he's not even listening, he can't even understand the words beyond the betrayed pain that laces the tone. The denotation doesn't matter anyway; the emotion of them is humming in his own mind like he is a tuning fork for Spirit's furious hurt, he doesn't need the inadequacies of language to give him a framework when the meaning is bypassing his mind and going straight into his veins.

It is overwhelming in a way that entirely redefines the word, that outstrips previous experiences so entirely that Stein can't recall why anything that came before was so frightening, seemed so intense, when now he can't breathe except in time with Spirit's half-sobbed words and his heart can't beat without the weapon's permission. When Spirit stops to suck in air, Stein tries to speak although he still doesn't know what to say. He's not certain he can handle more escalation, not sure what will happen if Spirit goes on. He thinks he might kiss his partner and he's afraid he may hurt him, and he lost control of this situation months ago but is only now realizing the breadth of his error, the extreme miscalculation when he thought this was his doing.

"Spirit," he starts, but the older boy cuts him off before he can continue.

"Don't you *dare*." Stein has never realized before that Spirit's eyes are always warm, that the weapon is always on the verge of forgiveness before Stein even decides on an action. It is only in the absence of that constant comfort that Stein recognizes it was there at all. "I have done *everything* I can to help you. I have been there for you for fucking *years*." Stein can't look away from the cold rage in that blue. It is horrifying and frightening and some part of him is rising to the challenge, whether to fight or capitulate he's not sure, and now there is pain under the rage too, a bottomless well of agony that Stein echoes back across with interest, and he really can't breathe at all now and is a little worried he may pass out. "I have cared when *no one else did*, and you've been -"

Spirit cuts off, looks away as the misery tears its way to the surface past the top layer of frustration. Stein lost control of this, of himself and the situation and his partner, an infinitely long time ago, but he can feel *something* rising in his blood and he knows that there is no way to stop it now but he has to try, like the desperate attempt during a fall to stumble back to center when balance is already long gone.

"I haven't -" he starts, and the denial is futile because of course he *has*, but he needs to *explain*, somehow, that he didn't *mean* what Spirit is taking away from this, that he didn't mean to hurt the weapon even though of course any thought makes it stunningly obvious that it would, that he has *cared* and *burned* and *agonized* about Spirit and that it was all a *mistake*, a horrible error caused by his own lost heart and fevered blood, and won't Spirit *forgive* him?

But Spirit steps in closer when Stein didn't think he could, and he seizes the front of Stein's coat and for a wild moment Stein thinks the weapon is going to kiss him although that seems contextually impossible. Excitement and insane hope and frantic panic are smothering Stein, he can't breathe with Spirit this close, he can't *think* and he can't *breathe*, and then Spirit hisses into his face, "Did you even care *at all*?"

The panic hits the rush of affirmation that surges through him, and Stein's throat closes up and he *can't* say what he *has* to say, there is *too much*, and the pound of absolute need crushes his frozen fear but sweeps away his ability to speak as well, and there is a tremblingly long moment of agony as Stein's head fills with feelings that his body can't express and Spirit stares at him with the cold judgment in his eyes. He needs *space*, he needs to *tell* Spirit, and the two desires smash hard into each other and suddenly he can move again.

"Don't TOUCH me." Stein shoves his hand against Spirit's chest. For a moment they are linked by his palm against the weapon's skin and the weapon's fistful of his shirt, eyes locked and both of them crying and the feedback from their mutual pain is too much, and there is no forgiveness in Spirit's eyes, not all the way down in the depths of the blue, and Stein knows then that he has lost him.

Stein's veins feel like they're on fire, like his emotions have taken raw physical form and are burning down his arm to crackle along Spirit's skin. His tongue won't work and his mouth won't move but the heat in his veins is tangible, and he shoves it down and out into Spirit, forces it into the weapon's body so there is no chance of misunderstanding. There is nothing left to save, there is nothing left to mend; there is only the destruction and the loneliness and the pain, and he pushes them out into Spirit and is not even surprised when the weapon is knocked backwards as if Stein had punched him.

Stein can feel when Spirit drops into unconsciousness, like a warm corner of his mind dropped into oblivion along with the weapon's. He doesn't feel anything but numb after that. There is a rational relief at the top layer of his thoughts, glad of the temporary protection his shock-induced distance is granting him from his own emotions, but even that is echoingly far away. There is just the loneliness, and the distance, and the spreading cold.

END OF VOLUME ONE


End file.
